We're ready.

It's a little earlier than we used to now with the schedule, but this will be the last time.

All right, so we'll go ahead and call to order the um work session or sort of council goals update part of the meeting tonight.

Um and we start with Eric with proposed changes to how we're gonna do this going forward.

Right.

So a little bit of uh process update.

So you mentioned this is the last time that we're gonna combine a quarterly update with a regular business meeting.

We have this new schedule where we've differentiated the work sessions from the business meeting.

So moving forward, beginning in January, um the council goal updates are just gonna be woven into those uh work session meetings.

Um we're gonna talk about talk in more detail about what that means and why we're making that change.

We're also gonna today talk to you about economic development.

That's it's a goal focus area, so you're gonna hear from Katie Brooks, our new economic development officer, and Cyrus Mooney.

Um we're gonna talk about the launch of our new website in January, and we're gonna preview the dashboard that incorporates your metrics that you uh put together as part of the council goals.

We have about 90 minutes worth of content uh to get through today.

I'm just gonna take about five minutes walking through what's what's changed and then I'll turn it over to Katie.

So we'll work the presentation up.

Um I'll just keep talking here as Kate's pulling it up.

So first off, um the what and the why.

So the the what is we want a more hands-on approach to council goal implementation, so that's why we're moving away from just these quarterly updates, which are really about giving a lot of information to council and really be more outcome focused with uh these updates, uh, when woven into those work sessions.

And why we're doing it because we want to use your time efficiently.

I think you know, we we've learned having these mega long meetings where you have content and receiving all this information and going into a business meeting is a lot to digest.

So we're wanting to get in sync with with that.

Um to slide four, Kate.

So the current state is part of what we have been doing just as a refresh, is to uh we meet internally as a staff every quarter, we meet in our goal areas and we help populate a progress report.

You see that progress report every quarter.

You can see what's been completed, what's in progress, or if there's something that's been flagged, you can kind of see that general high-level update.

We're gonna continue to do that at a quarterly level.

So you for the public for accountability on all the action items.

Um what's changing is we're not going to have this work session as a standalone.

We're again we're gonna incorporate that into those work session updates for those quarterly progress reports.

Um, I will be just giving that as part of a city manager report in the future.

And we also had an opportunity to involve our advisory boards in those quarterly updates.

We're going to continue on that theme.

We're going to do another summit of our advisory boards coming up here.

We're going to do that once a year just to really get that synced get that synced up.

We are already starting to practice that.

We're going to be incorporating a variety of advisory boards into our growth plan.

We're going to be in we've already planned for that for the electrification policy that you're going to be hearing about next week.

So we are doing that mixing of our advisory boards.

We're going to be recasting the transportation bond oversight as we've been discussing to be more broad more broad than just the GO bond.

So a lot of that work is happening.

So what's uh so what's new?

I've been kind of talking through this already.

Um, what we are doing internally is creating, and we've been doing this for a while, multidisciplinary teams that involve more than just the departments, you know, that you might traditionally think are focused, like police or fire, for example, on the police and fire goals or the public safety goals.

We're involving our Office of Performance Management, our data folks, um, city manager's office, legal, really creating for each of these goal areas a team that is focused on the metrics and the data that we're in the North Star that we're trying to achieve, but doing that amongst a cross section of departments and making sure that we're being strategic and not just one-way information but workshopping issues.

As I've talked about before, we've been doing this.

This isn't all that new.

We've been doing this with housing for the last year and a half or so.

We've been doing this with our shelters for the last year.

So we have some practice.

I would say the uh our experience with Bloomberg, the Harvard Bloomberg that we've discussed, uh, that we've been a part of selected as a cohort of cities.

This is really kind of an approach that is is a best practice uh for the problems that we're facing right now.

They're just complex, they're dynamic.

I'll talk through an example of what that means here in a moment, but it's it's to me this is the the right way to solve the problems of the day and demonstrate public value is by integrating these disciplines.

So moving on to those area teams, so they align with the council goal areas.

So I won't read through these.

I'll just note that like for the climate resiliency.

We also have kind of a subgroup of water conservation for our housing group.

We have a subgroup that's focused on our growth plan.

Um we've incorporated shelters into our housing team, so that's we've we've taken and gotten some efficiency.

So the last thing our staff need is more meetings just to have meetings.

We want to make sure these are really outcome focused.

We're leading with the metrics that we've established, and we're tying those uh uh actions to those metrics.

So every meeting we're reporting on real-time data, we're sharing those results on a quarterly basis at high level with council, but we're actively working those uh projects within each of those goal areas through those teams.

So, right now we have housing, we have economic prosperity that is up and running.

Um, our public safety is uh meeting next week.

Uh uh climate resiliency is a few weeks away from we've and again I want to say we're not starting from zero.

We've had four pieces of this, we're just putting a lot more uh discipline and rigor to it.

So if you go to the next slide, just to walk through a couple of examples here.

So I'll use the housing team.

So the housing team was pretty instrumental in helping to once uh review all the information to submit for the pro housing grant.

So it was a lot of data that we needed from our community development department from our office of performance management that led to the scoping and eventual award that we received.

Then we we did receive the award.

We had council goals that had a 20% reduction in permit times.

We then leveraged our the million dollars that we set aside for improvements to our uh processes permit system to hire a consultant to help with that.

So we collectively reviewed the scope of that RFP.

There was folks involved in the housing team that are selecting the consultant that are in the process right now of selecting that consultant, and then as that consultant is on board to like review products, that team is helping us to you know vet them across many departments.

So it includes housing, legal, community development, um, our engineering uh group from time to time.

So it's it's and it flexes.

We have a court group and then we pull in disciplines as the agenda calls for it.

Um that's one example.

Um I would say the the home committee that we have now.

All the home committee materials get vetted through that policy group to make sure that we're tracking council's direction on the scope, and then as they get towards uh providing recommendations to council, which are happening in the first meeting in December, we've had a chance to really look at it with many different eyes and disciplines so that we're giving you really good thoughtful information for council to consider uh as we move forward.

Transportation is another example.

Um, so like we're as we're built building our transportation group, we're including public safety.

We have this goal of reducing crashes by 10%.

We'll focus on safety and speeds and all of that.

And so we're integrating those disciplines to make sure that we're pulling all the levers that we can to affect that North Star metric.

Um, so agenda items are really driven towards the actions that are helping to contribute towards those goals.

So I want to just pause there and see if there's any questions on what we're trying to do.

And I'll just kind of wrap it up.

If not, I'll just wrap it up with our next quarterly.

So January will be a uh we'll do a dashboard update.

So you again we're you're we're focused on outcomes that we're seeing.

Jesse's gonna give you a preview uh this afternoon of what we have built so far.

It's still being built.

I'll be providing those quarterly updates starting in January.

Uh, and then we'll be just again incorporating the action items or direction from council needed into those weekly work sessions that we have now.

And then, as I mentioned earlier, that advisory summit that is planned for February at our new public works campus.

All right, any questions?

Just one Eric, I I think in an earlier version of this brief, there was also talking about a single person who was in charge in these various various groups.

Is that yeah?

I skipped over that part.

Thank you for that question.

So there's each of the goals has a sponsor, and that's one of the four of us in our city manager's office, myself, Russ, Stephanie, or Kate is the sponsor of the block and tackle.

Then we have a project lead, or somebody else from the the policy analyst, management analyst from the city manager's office that is facilitating the agendas, really doing the on-the-ground work, making sure it's all being pulled together.

We have somebody from our office of performance management on the data side, and then we have the subject matter experts in those teams that are responsible for the project, the actions that are in those goal areas.

So it's all those things working together.

That's the intent.

Right.

And I guess what I was thinking about is for us here on the dias is that then we'll have one person per goal that we can go to, right?

For basically all questions.

Yes, yeah.

So those goal sponsors I think are a great touch point for council.

So I'll just share with you.

So for public safety, uh, that's myself.

I'm housing and public safety.

That's me.

For uh for Russ, it's transportation and infrastructure.

Uh Kate is accessible and effective city government, and Stephanie is for climate.

Thank you.

All right, any other questions on the presentation?

All right, thank you.

Yeah, thanks.

All right, next um we'll get into one of these goal areas economic prosperity.

Okay.

Good afternoon, council, mayor, mayor for the Kent, Katie Brooks.

I am the economic development officer for the city of Bend, and I am here to present with my colleagues a um an update on your goal of economic prosperity for all.

So are we doing it?

Yes, we got it.

You're good.

So wait.

All right.

So um this is my third month in this seat, and we've done a lot of work in those three months, and there's been a lot of work leading up to my coming here.

So today's presentation is trying to bring an ongoing effort that the city has been um activating here for several months with a programmatic approach to economic development and where we sit now and delivering your goals.

How come this is not advancing?

There we go.

So here are the goals that um there we pulled directly from um your your work and your goal setting is creating comprehensive economic development plan and vision, which is measured by Ben's specific economic development index, a prosperity index.

That will be part of our overall program delivery.

Lead an effort to strengthen economic press economic prosperity with by enhancing strategic partnerships.

That's with a lot of the folks that I'm gonna be talking about in this presentation.

And finally, implement the urban renewal investment strategy as a tool to support economic growth with the target of 200 jobs created and 500 multifamily housing units constructed in this biennium.

So this is the delivery of these goals are gonna be in two different parts.

One, as you know, um, you folks also serve on the Borough, the Bend Urban Renewal Area Board.

And that investment process is called Invest Bend.

Jonathan's been bringing up to speed on that for several months now.

InvestBend will come before the Borough for its final approval.

We're going through the strategic process of vetting and working with the core area folks and CAB.

It's due to come before you on December 17th, and that'll be a recommendation for Borough Investments specifically.

Number two is just setting the table for an overall approach to economic development.

And that's the economic development plan that'll attach to the department and a programmatic delivery of economic development strategies.

So we are working on that.

Its completion is probably Q1, Q2 next year.

And the reason why is because there's a very robust outreach and vetting process that is attached to this.

First of all, BDAB is our advisory committee for you folks for a business perspective to the decisions and the policies that you make, and also for the development of this program.

So we are working with them now.

We meet next week and we're gonna have a series of meetings to go over very specific strategies and how we develop the overall programmatic delivery of this work.

We're also completing some stakeholder interviews, and Cyrus is going to share with you some key findings from those interviews.

One with the BIPOC business owners and also the ongoing focus group that's been working for the last several months to help us develop strategies, the vision, the direction that we're going.

In short, where we are today is we have a Borough, we have a very semi-nacent and developing economic development department.

We're taking input, we're utilizing and leveraging the data that we've gathered to form those goals and strategies so that we're informed by folks who own businesses and are a part of the business world here in Bend and the region.

We're really leveraging that data, which one day will form a whole platform of indices that we will track over time to make sure that we're on track and performing.

That will include Borough, it will include the overall economic development outreach, and I'll get into that here in a minute.

How we deliver that.

So the elements of all of those things that I just talked about are really in four major categories.

The first one is the urban renewal area.

Borough will house invest.

This is where we're investing, we're building, we're recruiting, we're leveraging public investments with private money and vice versa, and we're trying to meet our housing goals in these borough areas.

And that is, as you know, in and of itself a separate entity.

Another piece of the work of economic development toward these strategies, the overall program, is are things that we we contract out.

And when I say this, it's destination marketing like visit Bend, it's traded sector business recruitment, and the other work that EDCO provides to us through a contract, and also looking at how do we leverage through a contract additional support for infrastructure needs that we have and also economic development support from the state at that state level.

Then the city economic development department as a whole.

How do we service those folks?

How do we provide strategies and the infrastructure in which we can help them grow and thrive in Bend?

That'll include commercial, industrial development, and also we all know this, the underpinnings of it is which is infrastructure investment and leveraging these pieces to grow business in Bend.

Housing development is something we've heard, and Cyrus is going to probably talk about this a lot from business and the community alike.

It's an economic development component just as much as it is as a community component.

It determines who can live and who can work here.

And then regional collaboration will work with our partners across the region because we don't live in a bubble.

We are all interconnected, and we're gonna leverage the good work that's going on around the region as well.

And then finally, partnerships.

There are a lot of strategies that are going to be vetted over the coming months, and that will be carried on throughout the program.

And not all of them will be led by the city.

Some of these we really rely on our partners to help us deliver, and we participate in it.

One of them is workforce development.

We have many folks that are out there working on that.

One of which is East Cascade Works, for example, and there are others.

There are educational institutions, which we have very strong partnerships with that we're working on workforce strategies and making sure that we're in alignment moving forward.

Funding and infrastructure is just not a city need.

So we're working with our partners at the state and in the region to figure out how we move forward in making those those underpinning happen so things can come out of the ground.

And then finally, housing appears again because this is not just a Bend issue, it's a regional issue, and we want to make sure we leverage those partnerships moving forward.

So with that, Jonathan, I'm gonna let you derive.

Jonathan did the data analysis and did a great job of really taking a look at the state of the economy and a lot of different data points from many, many sources to help inform these strategies that we're forming.

So I'm gonna let him go ahead and before we start that make a question real quick.

Yeah.

Sure.

Um, just under the BERRA, kind of uh the thought bubble or whatever you call that up on the left-hand corner there.

Um shouldn't say housing and jobs.

I mean, I'm maybe meaning that picture, but just in terms of you know, like our our um site-specific TIF is focused on both, although we haven't had applications for it yet.

That's a good catch, you're absolutely right.

Infrastructure investments that you need are also about creating jobs.

Yeah, it seems to be important to put that up there.

Yeah, I think recruit kind of covers that, but it's good to actually have it in there.

And it's called out in your council goals, so I think that's a really good point.

Thanks.

So I'm not gonna belabor you with more data as you received over the last couple of months.

Um, two weeks ago, you got a link to the state of the housing, state of the economy.

The original documents that were uploaded were condensed and compressed, so there was a couple of words missing in some of the paragraphs.

We've updated it so it's legible now.

So I promise you, we all know how to write, but it was condensed on the PDF version, so we apologize for that.

This data, both for the state of the housing and the state of the economy, came from multiple sources.

One part of the economic development strategy and also the invest bin under BURRA, it's gleaning not only data that we have access to, but also existing plans that use prior data in their work.

So part of that was looking at what envisioned BIN did, uh, the climate action plan, um, COCC plan, um, the SEDS, which is the comprehensive economic development strategy that COIC does, which is very important.

We want to align with that.

The reason it's important is that SEDS allows the region, not only the region, but any municipality within that region to apply for grants to the economic development agency at the federal level.

EdCo and state of Oregon, Edco also provided us their rough draft of their strategic plan.

So we're really aligning all these data sources together.

And really, I'm gonna provide a high-level snapshot of where these um data trends are going.

So again, Bend in Central Oregon is the population growth engine of Oregon, as you can see through the graph of the index change from 2010, 37% for the city of Bend, and that's continuing through our projection.

So over the next 10 years, we're expected to have a continued 2% annual growth rate, which will add another 30,000 individuals to the city of Bend that is indicative of the Oregon housing needs assessment analysis that provides that we need 33,000 housing units over the next 20 years.

Over the past two decades, BIN has continued to solidify its place as the most populous city in central Oregon, and despite facing major economic disruptions like the pandemic, COVID-19, well, that's the same, great recession.

Bend has demonstrated a remarkable resilience in that population growth.

And again, since 2010, we've had an annual rate of about 2.5%.

Business investments remain high, and health care remains our largest employment sector.

This graph is the uh change per year of employment, uh, as you can see during the pandemic in 2019 and 2020, accommodation and food services lost substantial amounts.

They are getting back in your state of the economy report.

We noted that they have rebounded, but there's going to be probably some changes moving forward in terms of automated technology and delivery services.

So we don't know if the employment will fully rebound due to the changing nature of the economy.

But despite the broader economic headwinds that we mentioned just a second ago, commercial industrial investments in 2024 were the second largest on record with 93.7 million being invested, which is totaling nearly a half a billion since 2019.

And this is data derived from OPM.

They provide great data about permit valuations and completed permits in our various areas.

John, can I just ask you on that one?

Is that an outflow of recreation jobs and arts and entertainment there?

Is that what that is?

And the most recent question.

Yeah, so on the yeah, on the left hand side of that graph is uh reduction in labor force, but then they're color coded based on the year.

Right, yeah.

So the most recent years, there's an outflow there, right?

Yes.

Okay, thanks.

Uh real estate market holds steady.

Um, as you know, we saw news just this past week that uh Portland's office vacancy rate is now at 26.9%.

Ours is at um right about 5.4%, uh, which is healthy given everything that's going on with the office sector in general.

Industrial and flex space is about 2.4% vacant, and then retail is 4.1%.

Unlike our approach two years ago with housing vacancy, which we wanted 8% helped stabilize the market, which by the data that's been provided actually has worked based on council's direction.

A healthy uh market rate for vacancy for industrial retail and office is about 5%.

So we need more industrial space to accommodate job growth.

We need a little bit more retail space, and we have adequate uh office space.

But the catch about the adequate office space is of where it is located in the city.

So we want a more centralized district of office space in the core area, so we need to start having strategies, and Katie and I have been working on how do we have strategies to further that kind of develop it in the core area while also maintaining a healthy market rate.

Um, to answer a few questions about how has recent um business relocations affected the market.

I was just pulling up uh some of the retail.

Right now, retail vacancy is about 4.8 percent.

Caveat to that, Costco's uh vacant space in East Bend contributes to that, as well as some of the new retail that's gone online and Northwest Crossing and also here in the core area.

Office um office vacancy is at 5.7 percent, which is still around the same, uh, and then we're about 3.9 percent for uh industrial.

But again, we want 5%.

So we need more space for industrial, we've got adequate space for office, and we need just a little bit more space for retail.

So is just to ask about the percentage.

Is the percentage calculated per parcel, or like does like Costco being really large, does that impact it more, or but it's just one?

Yeah, how does that work?

Great question.

So office uh vacancy rates are based on square footage, and so yes, there is a caveat, and then the state of the economy we did point out that the rise in vacancy rates for retail is primarily contributed by the Costco.

Industrial, we've had historic industrial low levels, and so that's something we should work on in Juniper Ridge with the urban renewal district for retail that comes and goes based on spending, and we are also seeing consumer spending kind of decrease.

So we're gonna kind of watch that.

Um, in terms of the impact of the region, we are actually proud that these businesses that relocate to another area that needs more expansionary opportunities are remaining in central Oregon.

That way they still provide that stable job base for anybody that lives in the region.

And then a lot of these locations where we're seeing business closures but then moving out, it's because eventually those areas are changing use per just how the demographics and business compositions are going.

So we're confident with how the overall economy is going in terms of business recruitment and development, but there is going to be strategies to how to maximize that moving forward.

Obviously, with good news, there comes some bad news.

Um, incomes have grown, but our disparities have continued since 2010.

And this is nothing new or indicative of what Bend has done in the last five years.

It's just the natural market of the overall economy in the country.

Bend's median household income has increased by 35% from 2019 to 2023.

But despite this increase, most of the income growth is a result of households earning 100,000 or more moving into the region, and a number of those households earning less than 35,000 moving out of the city.

The number of households earning 200,000 or more saw the largest growth with 154% increase since 2019, while those earning between 150 and 199,000 increased by 53%.

This is there's nuance in the data.

This is not because there's jobs providing in this region.

It's those households are moving into the region.

And so there's that disconnect where are people actually getting paid that here?

Yes, but also no because they're bringing that wealth with them from wherever they're moving from.

The catch is like everywhere else in the country, middle class, which is the 20, 40th and 80th percentile or quintile of the US Census has kind of remained stagnant.

That's not unique to Ben.

That is what we're seeing not only in the country but also globally.

So that's not retirees because they're not technically earning an income, but it could be people who are working from home who are very high income earners.

Correct.

That's right.

Um this is nothing new, but this is something the council has uh dedicated the last biennium since I've been here, but also prior to that, affordable housing is needed to retain and attract new businesses and new business and talent.

Renters make up about 38% of our total households.

Uh they are 47% cost burden.

However, when I noted last year during the policy formation for the site specific rent has begun to stabilize because of the actions by the council of incentivizing more units, which brings more units online, which therefore decreases the overall demand, therefore increases decreases the overall rental increases.

Owners represent about 68, 64 percent of um total 62 percent excuse me, of total households.

Um with recent median home sale values and current market rate requirements, which in the state of the housing was 6.9% and a 10% down payment, only 16% of households could be first-time home buyers.

And I want to be very clear because a lot of times people have bought houses outside the community and come in and have disposable equity.

But if it was first-time home buyers, um the real caveat about the renter that I really want to point out is something that caught our eye is 59% of the total rental housing stock in the city of Bend is single family homes.

And this is where the cost burden starts to impact our renters.

Uh the average single-family home renting rate per month was $2,900.

Um renters on average earn about $66,000 per year, and we need to earn an additional 34% in order to adequately afford rent for single family homes.

That's why in the investment strategy over the last two years with Borough, we have focused primarily on multifamily units because in order to help lower the overall cost burden for our renters.

We know that we can't build single family homes cost effectively.

No one can at the moment due to the producer price index in your state of the economy.

The multifamily is a key component of helping stabilize rental prices.

And that those numbers, Jonathan, are for 2024 or 2023.

This is 2023, and that's the caveat with using US Census data.

We we do have the co-star market data that I provide you when you ask for it whenever you want it.

What we we only have access, and Jesse can speak to this much more clearly than I can.

We are delayed in terms of some of the data sets that we get.

So usually it's about a year behind for US Census, we're gonna employment department.

We do have the ability to see kind of quarterly reports for the overall metro, and we kind of can have a baseline or a guiding star towards income, but for Benz specific, it's gonna be usually about a year delay.

And Jonathan, you're not counting middle housing as part of that 59%, right?

Uh according to the US Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, uh, anything that is considered a single family attached or detached home is in that mix.

Can I ask a question?

Or maybe this is more of a suggestion in our you know, our median home price in Bend is what now?

Seven, seven or seven-ish.

And it's affordable to people who make like over 200% of AMI, which is I think like over 200,000 dollars.

So I've I kind of feel like we need another category because that like on the ownership category, and I mean, even on the rental category too, because there are a lot of very high-end rentals in the market, too.

I kind of feel like it maybe would be helpful to sort of kind of keep in mind that yeah, yeah.

That really speaks to the disparity issue.

Exactly.

Earnings.

Yeah, that's what this graph is right here.

Yeah.

Um, and so like I said, uh, the two reports are pretty comprehensive.

It took a lot of staff members to also contribute.

So it wasn't just me, it was these two at the table, our housing division, Matt, Eric, everyone.

And so it's not just me.

I want to be very clear.

But it is more comprehensive than what most communities do.

And one of the reasons we did it is because we wanted to have the best data set foundation for the economic development strategy.

All right.

Alrighty.

So obviously a lot of data, but we view that as a very integral component of the uh feedback and kind of uh work that goes into the economic development strategy, and a big portion of that is the outreach, and that comes from a variety of different ways in how we engage with the business community and broader community members.

Uh, we've had stakeholder interviews, we've had focus group sessions, we have an advisory body, we have surveys, so we have tried to be really intentional with leaving no stone unturned with giving folks opportunities to engage and provide feedback that can be incorporated into how all of this comes to be.

We've had BDAB members also be included in the focus group that is met three times and will be having their final meeting later this month.

And so they have been very in tune with how this process has gone from start to finish.

And their feedback, I think, has also really shaped uh the speed in which we've moved.

I think they've asked some really good questions and asked us to be really thoughtful and intentional with how all of the uh components are really coming together and what specific actions are gonna be tasked uh for not just us at the city staff level, but also with the partners that are at the table and also included in BDAB.

As mentioned, focus group meetings.

We have roughly 30 different uh community members that are comprised of that group at that group.

Uh we have members from priority industry clusters, we have minority-owned businesses, we have community-based organizations, other econ dev partners, and then our champions from City Council and from Borough.

Those sessions are facilitated by SSW, um, which is the same consulting firm that has done council goals for the past few bienniums, and that has been really helpful to have a third party really facilitate the conversation and make sure all of the different interests are being balanced and weighed in an equitable way.

Um, as Katie previously mentioned, our final meeting is scheduled for October 30th.

Um between BDAB and the focus group, people have just been so engaged that we've just been hearing, can we please have more?

Can we please have more?

We want to be as involved as we can be, and I think that is a testament to uh how passionate our community is and how engaged people are with this process.

Some of the recommended guiding principles that have come from that focus group are listed here: inclusive economic growth where we prioritize economic and community investments that result in real opportunities for all residents and workers.

Customer service that places the needs and experience of city customers at the heart of every decision, ensuring responsiveness, transparency, quickness, and accessibility in all interactions, adaptable and innovative approaches to policies and investments that respond to business needs, market conditions, and community desires, accountable and transparent actions that ensure openness in all decisions and operations, defined actions, owned responsibilities, and accessible information to residents and stakeholders.

I think that tells you uh yeah, to how engaged this group was.

I think those are very intentional words.

Um, and I think it's just really great feedback that we're hearing from the community.

This wasn't derived by city staff, but I think it is consistent with what we experience and see on a day-to-day basis.

Stakeholder interviews is something I've been largely a part of my work uh in this process and has been super rewarding uh not only for what we learn, but also just establishing those relationships and seeing all the quirks and different uh barriers that people have had to overcome to make their businesses be at the point that they're at today and continue to thrive, and seeing how they care for their staff and their workforce is just I think a reflection of how caring our community is and how our small businesses are really the backbone of a lot of what we have come to be as a community.

Uh the picture you see here is how Metoliaus Chai T was uh derived.

And if you haven't had the pleasure of meeting Amy, you'll see this is a good depiction of her personality and her creativity to think outside the box and say, you know, I have this idea, here's how we're gonna get there, and the mayor and mayor Pro Tem and I are gonna go for a tour in a couple of weeks where you can see how uh idea like this can actually come to be.

And it I think is just a very heartwarming and inspiring story.

Um so those have consisted of one-on-one interviews, we've had group interviews with business associations and other groups uh throughout town.

There's been a lot of board engagement from partners like Visit Bend, Cultivate Bend, Edco, and the Bend Chamber of Commerce.

Surveys, we currently have a survey open right now.

There have been over 150 responses.

Um, it's been extremely helpful, and I think again, reinforced a lot of the data that we've seen previously, but again, another opportunity for the ways in which people can provide their feedback and input.

Some of the preliminary findings that have been derived from both the survey and the stakeholder interviews is that Oregon is a really hard place to do business.

I don't think that comes as a surprise to anyone, but um the mounting effects of what's happening in the economy make Oregon a continuously challenging place from the tools and incentives that we have at a state level through Business Oregon and other agencies.

I again reflects the creativity that I think we're trying to do at the local level through Borough and our other investment uh strategy actions.

I think that's huge because the state hasn't necessarily given us a lot to work with in that regard.

Permitting is a substantial barrier.

Um I wanna caveat that by saying a lot of the feedback that we've received is uh historic, or these are experiences that people have already worked through the process, and that's their reflection of it, not necessarily people that are in the process today.

And I want to acknowledge that we've made leaps and bounds of improvements as an organization regarding permitting.

It I think continues to be something we need to pay attention to and address, but um, that was a significant component of feedback that we've heard throughout all of the engagement opportunities.

Better communication is needed between the city and business community.

I think that is a little bit subjective.

I think communication can come in a variety of different ways, and that has been noted in the feedback.

Some people want to have the city host more economic development or business specific uh events.

Some people want more timely communication via newsletters or via email, and so I think we can get creative with providing more of those opportunities across the board.

Um, community business support is great.

As previously noted, we have a lot of different partners in all of the components of economic development doing incredible work, and that is felt by businesses directly.

A lack of industrial land or affordable space.

Um, I think in the survey data that we've seen, a lot of people are, I would say, comfortable with their current footprint, but there aren't as many opportunities to expand.

And that can be problematic for growth.

I think it's a good sign that at least people are happy for the time being.

But looking forward, having that opportunity to grow and expand, I think will be really important.

That comment that's all about industrial land and or blade industrial.

Mostly, yeah.

Yep.

Transportation, distribution of product is extremely challenging.

Again, no secret, we know we're a desert out here, and a lot of accessibility through highways, through freight, through air.

Those are all things that are challenging for folks to get product in and out of our city.

So those are some of the preliminary findings.

All right, we're wrapping it up now.

Um, so you can see how we're piecing all these components together of what we're hearing and what the data is telling us.

This is the final piece.

Is uh in the final report we take the time to look at our peers across the country and do some comparative analysis, but we also just did a little boot gum work and went to Vancouver and Beaverton.

We've also talked to Hillsborough and some other communities within our state and region trying to understand how they develop their economic development strategies, how they built their departments, what was the motivation and learn some lessons.

And it was it was eye-opening, and every single one of them is absolutely different in how they've approached it and has a different background and different stories, but it was really fascinating how most of the strategies aligned.

At the end of the day, how do you support and keep your existing businesses?

And what role does the city play in that?

And how to get creative in those endeavors.

And so it was a trip worth doing, and there are lots of public-private partnership ideas out there, but really what was great is to learn about the organizational structures and really how they thought from a city's point of view.

What is your role?

How do you deliver it?

Who are you focusing on, and what is your end goal?

So with that, happy to answer questions and talk about this approach.

I know working on their innovation district, have they been wrapped into some of these stakeholder sort of input on what that they're thinking that's gonna look like?

Yeah, they're part of the focus group, and um I meet with them regularly.

Cyber says the innovation district is part and parcel of some of the the land availability and uh the target sectors analysis that we worked on with Echo Northwest, they're hand in hand with that effort.

Great.

Yeah, other questions?

Yeah, Arya.

Um, one of the aspects of things like transportation planning actually should look at what kinds of businesses exist in the place.

And so I'm wondering if our economic development plan or our strategies for investing in urban renewal areas will include some awareness of what kinds of businesses there are.

So we have a lot of visitors, and there's the kinds of businesses that serve visitors aren't necessarily the same businesses that people use to meet get their daily needs met.

Is that kind of distinction going to be part of our investment strategy?

Yeah, um, in as much so when you talk about the visitor assets, um you're talking about lodging, restaurants, um services uh around the recreational industry.

Um, do we have enough event space?

Do we have enough hotel space?

How do you develop a district approach, for example, of how you develop visitor-centric assets?

All of that is going to be part and parcel, not only of the borough strategies, but our overall strategy because when you talk about things like that, the interaction with the actual on-the-ground day-to-day is pretty vast, and it crosses into transit, walkability, um, what kind of businesses are in a support mode that that rely on those visitors and what are not, where you actually build your commercial districts that are more uh centered toward delivering just the business that are living, working of Bend rather than recreation and visitor-oriented.

So a lot of that goes into the mix as well.

Yep.

Just the one thing that I asked you about, Jonathan during the is the outflow of the recreation and the arts jobs right there.

And I and I know that's one of the sectors that we're really trying to trying to cultivate as we go forward here.

That that gave me pause.

Um, and talking to business owners, they've they've talked about how it's hard to the cost to operate in the recreational industry here locally is a real barrier to them.

Do you do you have anything to add on that, or is that just gonna be part of try to solve that problem as we go forward?

Well, starting, you might want to add some stuff.

So the housing has a lot in affordability of Bent, has a lot to do with that.

Historically, recreational jobs are seasonal, and uh certain percentage of them are.

There are industries and and companies in town that have been trying to do something about that and collaborating with summer winter activities to keep people living here, keep all people employed.

Um, last year, I believe, and the year before we had a downtick in visitors, right?

And that might have had something to do with it.

This year, I understand when we went to visit Ben, our numbers are back up.

But it's it's definitely tied to the economy, how often and how robustly people recreate.

So that's always going to be an influencing factor too.

What did I miss?

Yeah.

Um, sort of your point, counselor.

I'm gonna weave your question and his question into the same.

So in the target sector industry, one of the things that the growth management plan will be doing in the coming years is doing an economic opportunity analysis.

And so we are going to give them that data of like of these priority industries, what is the square footage of an employee on that acre?

They will extrapolate that to our industrial land.

So we'll actually know where and when and how to actually accommodate for that type of growth because we'll need 20 years of land in the future.

But that being said, we kind of can do on the ground data analysis of like what we need right now of just looking at our top employers in that cluster.

To your point about the lot, that's one of the reasons why instead of calling it hospitality and tourism.

Vizitiven and I had worked together.

How do we craft a more narrative of lifestyle and culture because there's more opportunities in the industry cluster analysis?

There's what we call the creative industries.

It's a rising cluster.

And so one of the things we're like looking at with this performing arts center and all this uh other stuff that's happening.

How do you foster another industry cluster that's not just the four that we've identified but that are up and coming?

And lastly, um it's the affordable space issue.

It's the it's the access.

One of the things that Burrow will be looking at in quarter one is a retail market analysis, not only for the core area, then we will extrapolate that data, give it to OPM of how do we pinpoint that microcommercial effort throughout the area that we see and what so there's a lot of things that we have planned to do.

It's just how do we get it in the right pinpoint to meet the transportation needs to meet the retail needs to meet the housing needs, and that's why one of the reasons why we're slowing it down a little bit because we've had a lot more input about various aspects of the economic development of the entire city, not just from the focus of the traditional business retention and expansion.

Great.

Yeah.

On on the along those same lines is like another thing to maybe think about, and or I'm curious if you did, is um resiliency and sort of sustainability in our community.

So Bend being you know hours from major metro areas, um, it's and with real limitations on how we can manage waste in our community.

It's interesting to me to think about uh recycling um waste streams into materials that folks can use um here in town or products that can be sold here in town as well as exported.

So I'm curious if you look at that or that's part of the council goals too.

One of the bodies of work that we'll be looking at in the coming year is how do we deliver um resiliency on on several levels.

One is an economic resiliency level as we enter into some uncertain economic times.

What role does the city play?

Um the other piece of it is it along the lines of what you folks are considering with uh sustainable goals.

Um, and a lot of it has to do also with how do you create an environment by which the economy is durable, and that goes into how you use energy, how you um dispose of waste, how you nurture and grow the type of workforce that's actually future focused, not just for today, and with how quickly AI and automation is is changing workforce development within even some of the target industry sectors that we're looking at, we should know that.

And that goes into a resiliency plan into the economic development strategy.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Maybe one more question, or anybody else have a question?

I mean, I think um it's maybe not partly a question, partly a comment.

That um I'm assuming that in the plan, if there is a need for additional staffing, we're gonna hear about that in order to be able to make some kind of biannual budget adjustment.

Because it often seemed to me that we don't have quite the capacity that we need to have our ambition to actually get there.

Yeah, that's good, right?

I'm not trying to overdo it here, but I also want to be realistic about being able to achieve all the goals that we have.

So assuming that will be in the plan, I guess.

It's a great lead-in because we will be talking about um, as Katie mentioned in December, the investment plan will be before Borough for approval.

We'll be uh bringing a supplemental budget for you, probably in Q1.

That will include some additional staffing resources needed.

We'll talk about how we're gonna pay for that with existing revenue necessary new revenue.

Uh so we're working on those plans right now to really build out the economic development team.

So to be to come here soon.

Great.

Can I make one one more little comment?

Um on the permitting timelines.

It it happens I had breakfast with a friend of mine the other day, and her husband is starting a new business, and first time you know, starting a new business in Bend, and um really struggled through the permitting process.

So I I asked, she didn't know if that if her husband had talked with the development navigator, um, but I'm I'm curious how the development navigator will be interfacing with with your team.

A lot.

Okay, absolutely.

Yeah, and Cyrus, I know you too.

Yeah, and Eric and me quite a bit on this topic specifically.

And I think the biggest thing is like raising awareness that we have a position dedicated to that.

It's been a piece of my work since I've been at the city, and I I do think there's a lot of value there, but a lot of people just didn't know I existed, don't know Erica Jensen exists now, so that's one piece of it.

But um there's are a lot of ways in which that can be deployed and not just on a reactive level, but also getting out into the community and being at events and being at business community meetings and being at the central district association meeting that you had recommended yesterday.

I think there's just a lot of ways that there are opportunities for us to use that position more strategically.

But she's new and we're getting her going and she's job shadowing, and I'm bringing her along as much as possible.

But it's a good point.

Thanks.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yep.

All right, next we get our update on the website improvement project.

So both of these next topics are in our accessible and effective city government.

It's been a long-standing goal to update the city's website.

I just want to appreciate Renee and her team and her leadership to bring this to the finish line.

We're almost there to launch the new website.

So it's pretty exciting.

Then we'll get to Jesse to talk about the dashboard.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor Keebler, Mayor Pratem Perkins, Counselors, Renee Mitchell, Communications and Engagement Officer.

And joining me are Jacob Riggald, user experience designer and Carrie Dodd, web and graphics coordinator.

And we are really excited to share with you an update on the website.

We all know that you've been asking this for some time.

So it's a project that's been in the works for several years, a culmination of a lot of work across all departments, with really the main goal of how do we improve our website for our community members.

So last biennium, the council identified in action under the accessible and effective.

Renee, the microphone over to the case.

Oh, sure.

Thank you.

Last biennium, the council identified an action under the accessible and effective city government to create a human-centered design to improve the City of Bend website and its customer service.

So there are three main components of this project.

First, human-centered design.

What does this mean?

It's redesigning the website, looking at the community needs at the forefront of the design process, which includes making it easy to search, easy to navigate, accessible.

We're adhering to the web content accessibility guidelines, making text readable, using really clear, understandable language and sufficient color contrast, and then transactional, creating a website that allows our community to pay their bills online, fill out forms, find the information they need really quickly and easily.

Our recent community survey resulted in that community members use the website as one of their main sources of information.

So it needs to be working 24-7 and easy to use.

Next is a new platform.

We're moving to WordPress from a platform called Granicus Vision.

Granicus is really antiquated, and there's no plans that we see that they're going to update or modernize it.

So what this means is it's really challenging for us to make changes and really costly for us to make changes.

So WordPress is an easy-to-use, more affordable platform.

And then also refreshing, refreshing our branding.

We see this is a great opportunity to update our branding with new colors, new font, and design elements that we can use to create a really clean website with large readable type.

We're looking at using imagery, showing people actually using our services.

And we're going to be using the this refresh branding across all of our communications across all departments.

So we're developing consistency from our website to all the departments and all of their communication.

So yeah, with that, I'll talk about why we're doing this or expand on that a little bit more too.

So for one, as Renee mentioned, um, it's a primary source of information for our community.

And as you can see here on the right, in 2024, we received one nearly 1.6 million views on our site, which is quite a lot that amounts to over 4,000 views a day.

And that's a really a typical year, too.

So with all that traffic, we want to really make sure that our site is transactional and user-friendly, meaning our site visitors, the people coming to our site can easily access the information that they're looking for.

They can navigate the services that they're coming to our site to perform, be it making payments, submitting service requests to fill potholes, um, applying for permits, etc.

And then, yeah, number three, um, as Renee mentioned, we want to make sure that we're um meeting or exceeding accessibility requirements, specifically those outlined um in the web content accessibility guidelines 2.1 double A criteria.

And over here on the right to you, we have these are some of the top 10 most visited pages, too.

So again, as you can see, we want to make sure that those service pages are really kind of dialed in.

We want to make sure that it's easy to use because we see a lot of people hitting those pages.

I thought council would have been.

I was supposed to say one page.

It's a lot.

It's a lesson.

So back in 2022, uh we conducted some user research.

Um and for anyone who's tried to use our site, this may not come as much of a surprise.

But um it was really important for us to have some concrete data to back up our assumptions here, too.

So and it also gave us the opportunity to surface some uh some unexpected patterns too that we found in that data.

But really, what kind of some of the top things that came out of that research that we found is the community had confusion around the permitting process, as you mentioned.

It's not, yeah, it's not uncommon.

Um there's a lot of questions around parking, paying or water bills is difficult.

The search functionality needs improvement.

Um I'll just apologize uh to everyone from the city.

Our our search tool right now is it's terrible.

It does not work.

Yeah, so that is one piece that does not work.

Yes.

Thank goodness for Google.

Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, anyone who doesn't do this, leave our site, go to Google, just type in City of Bend, whatever you're looking for, and then you'll have a better job getting to that.

Until January.

Till January.

It's gonna be perfect.

Can you walk that back a little bit?

Yes.

That's what every definition of perfect is.

Um lastly, yeah, in general, our websites just hard to navigate and finding information is difficult.

I mean, and as you saw on this slide too, search results was the number five page visited.

So that kind of shows you that if you can't find it, they're gonna search for it.

And a lot of people just search anyway.

Yeah.

Too.

But um, so since then we've we've been doing a lot of work on the back end, um, really trying to address a lot of these um a lot of these findings that came up and set us up for this relaunch too.

Um so that being like improving the user um user experience on you know, at the page level, making sure the content's written at an eighth grade reading level and stuff too, reorganizing pages, trying to address that navigate that difficult navigation piece.

Um, but we need to move to a new platform to address all of these things too.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Carrie to go over some more of the details on the work that we have been doing.

So we've been we've been working uh diligently on a content refactor of we've been going through every single page of the site, piece by piece, content area by content area, working with all of our uh departments, divisions, uh everybody that we can talk to to make sure their content is current and it's relevant.

It's written at a way that our research shows that the majority of people comprehend content at like an eighth grade reading level.

So we've been trying to really get content super focused so it makes sense and it's easy to digest for the average community member.

That's been one of our goals.

Uh we've been working on overhauling and navigation.

We've been looking at every single department, every section, and saying, what makes sense, what doesn't?

Let's regroup things, let's reorganize things.

Let's maybe even think about things not in a departmental way, like we might think about how it's organized as a city, but how is it organized by service?

How would a community member think about how content is approached?

And so we've been trying to reorganize and refactor through that lens.

Um and then we've uh we've started when I started on this project, we had over a thousand pages of content.

We're now under 800.

So we have eliminated a lot of excessive pages, old pages, old content, and we're continuing that process.

Then we've also worked on accessibility enhancements, trying to be really mindful, again, making accessible for the average reader, but also be focused on how are things worded so it's easy for screen readers to approach things like that.

Um, and then we have been implementing this refresh content page by page.

So as you've looked at probably parts of the site, if you've been on it, the city council pages are done.

We refactored those, but we also have done a lot of other departments.

The screenshot example, this section for development and permitting, it didn't exist previously.

And so we worked with community development department to really work on this and flesh it out to try to help with that permitting process to try to make it easier.

And so that's been one piece that we've done.

And then we've tried to make sure that there's really strong consistency in voice and how the information is presented, so that it doesn't sound like all of these like 10 different small businesses under one roof.

So that it doesn't sound like all of these like 10 different small businesses under one roof.

It's one cohesive collective city, one unit, and that's been one of our goals that we've been focused on.

All right, so I'm gonna walk you through our brand refresh.

Did anyone know this?

The PowerPoint presentation looks a little different.

Sneak peek on what's to come.

So can you go back inside, please?

Yes.

So the designs are all focused around our logo.

Our logo is very recognizable.

There's ownership, and so we're looking at using the circle as the main component of our design because it's um represents connectedness and um connect.

I'm sorry, connectivity and connection.

So yeah, here's a look at our brand colors.

They're just slightly evolved from where we are now, but we're taking inspiration from our natural surroundings.

We've updated our logo.

So on the left side is our current logo with the tan color behind and the font that's pretty narrow.

Our new logo, we're moving the tan color and updating the font so it's more modern, shows more sense of strength.

Here's some design elements again using the circle.

So we um have our logo that can be placed over a photograph, it can be used as a pattern.

We can have a circle over a photograph that highlights an image within that photo.

And here's another fun design element.

It's really simple yet effective.

It's looking between the B and the E in a logo.

So you see that little arrow pointing toward the B.

That is what's called the mountain notch, and we'll be using that to draw the user's attention to messaging and to a photograph.

We've updated our icons so they're more round in nature, more modern, and new colors behind them.

And we've developed one for every department.

And then here is our messaging for city of Bend, evergreen messaging citywide.

We're also developing new messaging for every single department that will be launched with the new website in January.

But here is a look at the city messaging, which is one bend built together.

One bend emphasizes unity.

It celebrates that everyone who lives, works, and visits Bend is part of the same city while encouraging a shared connection, especially during a time of rapid growth and change, and built together centers around collaboration.

It highlights how the city is building relationships, trust, and a shared future with its community as it builds infrastructure, services, and programs.

It also acknowledges the active role the community plays in shaping Ben's direction, values, and priorities.

Now Jacob is gonna walk you through this a couple pages of the site.

A couple of virtual reality things.

I thought it was gonna be 3D.

I thought it was gonna be three.

One second switch over.

Okay, cool.

Now let's do that.

Okay, so what we see here is this is so this is a prototype of what our website is going to look like.

And Renee's how what Renee said, um, we have we have a few different pages that we're gonna show you and like how they're going to be designed.

So this is about like 95% there of like what it will look like.

Um of the functionality isn't necessarily here, but I'll walk you through the overall kind of how this branding has been applied to the site, too.

So as you can see, um overall, there's a cleaner layout.

Uh there's a lot more negative space, um, kind of room to breathe between text, um, more white space, more color has introduced, more graphic elements, photography, and as Renee mentioned earlier, particularly highlighting people and the people doing the work here and our and highlighting our our community.

Fewer walls of text, too.

So we're really trying to, like the work that Carrie talked about, really trying to dial back how much text we have on the site wherever we can.

Rewriting it at that eighth grade reading level, um, removing jargon and acronyms wherever we can.

Um that updated messaging that Renee just went through, one bend built together as front and center right here on the home page, and then as you can see, that circle motif we'll see throughout.

We'll start with the navigation bar here at the top.

Um, to help eliminate clutter.

I mean, it's more clean, clear, and user-friendly, but we have rolled the top menu into what's called a hamburger menu.

So again, it reduces clutter, everything can be found right under that button there, too.

Um there's also a prominent kind of ever-present navigation or sorry, um search bar up here at the top to perfect search bar, right?

Perfect search bar, right?

Yeah.

Perfect search bar.

Nothing.

Um so yeah, we wanted to make sure that that was front and center, and with a with a functioning search tool, um people can actually use that.

Also within that bar, we have this quick links drop down.

It's again, this is a prototype, so it's not actually fully built out, but that will, once you click on it, it will expand to show some of those top services or those top pages that you can quickly get to across the site.

Um, then over here on the right, we have a couple of like high-level, kind of more evergreen pages that you can get to.

So if you want to learn about like the city of Bend or connect with staff or um the our elected officials, um, you can visit it there.

Here we have we'll be able to toggle through different slides to help kind of highlight some of the key you know, projects or services programs and stuff that we're working on currently.

Then as you go down, we have this new section we're calling now and noteworthy, which basically is it just another place to really make sure those important projects and whatnot are are front and center and easy for people to see all at a glance.

Anything you know that the community cares about, they can quickly jump to that and then just kind of view all here if you want to see more.

Services again, we want to make sure that this is a really service-oriented website, as Carrie mentioned, too, breaking away from our internal structure and really focusing on how the community navigates the site.

Like what are the services that they're looking for, not who provides that service, you know, not putting the onus on them to know that information.

So this again, prototype, it's not fully built out, but as we hover over this text, this image over here will change to match and give a little more context to that specific service.

And then you can view all services there.

Continuing to scroll.

We have our little calendar widget too, with a little bit of interaction to help draw attention to the specific calendar item.

Um, you're viewing.

You can then see all the calendar events there.

These will be um this you can yeah, scroll left and right too.

And here's a new section that we are building out as well, too, that doesn't currently exist, but really compiling all these different guides and stuff that we're starting to build.

So a property owner's guide to permitting, for example.

Um, how to get involved with winter coming up, we have a winter tips page.

That would be something we'd want to include here too.

And as we continue to go, we'll continue to add more and more um pieces of content to just help people familiarize themselves with service.

Like starting a business in then, like, great idea.

Yeah, firewise.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I think this will be a really valuable section right here.

That's awesome.

Great suggestions.

Yeah.

Um, some contact information for some top service areas and then we're all the way at the bottom, Arnold.

Did you see that?

We were like throwing you guys in the back.

Oh, quickly.

Oh, I see.

And then we get to so then we get to the footer here at the bottom too.

So again, with those with those top pages that people are visiting here again.

So as they scroll to the bottom, just another place to get to that content.

So with that, I'll I'll scroll back up to the top and walk through, talk about the menu a little bit more.

So now we have a um, so again, we have the services up at the top too, and we've built it out so that there's it's a three-panel menu.

So now we can it allows us to um include more menu options than our current site allows too.

If we were to actually on our current site, if we were to have as many menu items as are here, it would just fill up the entire screen and you wouldn't be able to see a lot of them.

So what this allows for the community is the ability to really navigate to those specific services from anywhere on our site just by opening the menu, they can click through and get to those.

How would that work in a mobile?

He will show us great questions.

It's not fully built out on the mobile, but um, yeah, I can show you that after.

Um then um as you can see here too.

So wherever you're at in the navigation, it highlights your path that you're on to help just kind of keep you grounded on where you're at.

So we can add a little bit more context for each one of these for some of the those areas that aren't quite as clear.

And as actually I'll highlight it later.

So we scroll down.

This as you can see, more white space, for larger photos, a lot more photos, larger text too to help address accessibility issues, make it easier to read for everyone.

Color blocks to help separate content too, just makes it a lot easier to navigate and see.

So as you go, we're not competing with other information.

So each each page has can have like one focus.

Continue to go.

I'll scroll through this stuff a little bit more quickly.

Accordion widgets, more contact info, a little call to action, a larger call to action.

So basically to send you off to another page, it gives you a little bit of context.

Here's some cool functionality that is going to be implemented too.

Like as you scroll, this left column pauses to help give and maintain that context for the content that continues to scroll on the right too.

And we'll see a good example of like where this is really helpful on this next page, because now we're at the footer.

Jump over to this guide for Dex Porches and patio covers.

So as you can see, yeah, more imagery, call to action, calls to action, and then right here too.

So the permitting process, this gives us the opportunity to continue to build this out.

We could add like a link over to City View for people to read through the process here on the right, and then no matter where they're at, they can just go over to the left and click like I'm ready to go, actually apply for a building permit.

But it gives that yeah, that clear context.

We have these larger um larger numbers and stuff to help with wayfinding to know which step you're on and help you know make it really obvious that this is a step process.

Continue to go, contact information, FAQs.

This is a two-column accordion block here, and then some more elements down here.

I'll jump over to another page now.

Here's an example of what a form would look like on our site.

You can use mayor a lot of times.

And then a project too.

So again, we have that left column sticky, so it's just gonna be ever present there, showing some really kind of important information, where that we're at in the project, um, when we expect it to be completed, contact information, but we can continue to scroll on the right.

Important updates can will go in these box the colored box to help draw attention to it.

But I'll just continue to scroll through.

We have all those colored blocks to help draw attention and break up content.

I don't think there's anything else to show there.

Oh, one other piece I'll highlight too.

Up here is this um anchor links, basically.

So it's again, this is just a prototype, so it's not functioning the way it will on our site.

But as you continue to scroll, this highlight will move as you scroll down the page.

And you can use this also to navigate the page as well.

So you can just jump if there's a section that you can see at a glance that you want to get right to, you can just click it and go right to it.

Let's see.

Okay, sorry.

We could look at this forever.

I know this the dashboard looks like.

Last piece.

Yeah.

Calendar events.

This is what it looks like.

Jake, if you want to just quickly show the mobile.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, so the site does really well on mobile.

Um we we wanted to make sure that our design partners really focused on making this a mobile first design too.

So to your question, um, Counselor Platt, when you open up the menu, it basically each panel fills the screen.

When you open up the menu, it basically each panel fills the screen.

And then once you click on it.

Let's see, I hope I have built it out there.

It'll just advance to that next one.

Yeah.

Yeah, and then you can click back.

Questions?

Yeah.

When will it be live?

Great question.

January 2026.

Live and perfect, January.

So that'll be about five years after I entered office with this on my things to do.

Update website.

No, it's everyone's goal because it is the place that people go to get information.

It's a place we send people all the time.

I'm always here's a link.

Go look at this.

Go get more information here.

So to have this be much more functional and accessible is really important.

And great.

I was just gonna ask.

Yeah, yeah.

Great question.

So first off, with that content work that we're doing, I think paring down and lowering the reading level, trying to make it more kind of attainable for the majority of the community, helps translation tools.

But we're also with the new platform going to be implementing uh a better language translation tool called WeGlot that'll sit on top, and that's one that will have more it works a lot better than like Google Translate, which is basically like a word-for-word translation tool.

We Glau will give us the opportunity to make more kind of region-specific translations and go in and translate ourselves like specific phrases and sentences and things like that too.

So it'll just pull that instead as you know as you go through the site instead of just individual words and piece it together like Frankenstein.

And does that tool then open it up to make like more languages are available too?

Right.

Yeah.

And for people who are um blind and visually impaired, visually impaired, yeah.

Um what's the tool?

What's happening there?

So there's something that's gonna read for the screen readers here.

Yeah, we're we're making sure that it's um in working with our design and development partner that the website does meet that WCAG 2.1 standards too.

Um, but we intend to meet with COBAC as well and have some people actually run through it with a screen reader to you know identify any issues that like some automated testing might overlook too.

And if it's not working for someone or they have feedback about the the permitting process or something like that, how it's presented, what should they do?

Reach out to us, yeah.

And we intend to um yeah, we'll make sure that our that is clear and easy to provide feedback to us.

And I think one thing moving forward that we really want to highlight is more interactions with the community.

We want to be engaging the community, actually being more proactive too and asking and kind of doing surveys, doing you know, testing with the community and gathering that data and continuing to evolve our website.

And that's really another kind of key piece of like why we're moving to this new platform is it affords us the opportunity to make any change we want that comes up.

So even with changes with like AI and stuff like that too, and and the ways that we start to navigate once people are starting to use um their own agents and whatnot, then we can actually start to implement some of those changes on our site.

We've also been intentionally through our content refactoring process.

We've been meeting with the we've been meeting with front-counter staff across the city intentionally to ask them what are they hearing from community members because we can't hear everybody all at once.

And so um, that's been really key in part of this process as well.

We're trying to get what are people asking for?

What are how what are they struggling with?

We're trying to make those changes and implement those as we can.

And we have to focus groups today too, as well to help inform some before we got.

And we'll do user testing in December before we launch to try to work out all the bugs.

We'll all get the link to user test.

Yes, absolutely.

We don't have user tests.

Thank you.

Congrats on moving this.

Awesome.

I know how hard this is and how long it takes for you.

Having done a much smaller version of it a couple times, and it just really takes and it's good to be thoughtful.

Thank you.

Maybe move a little slower so that you're ready to really jump out the door and have a really good product.

So congrats on that.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your support.

Yeah, thank you everyone.

Thanks, everyone.

Let's look at our dashboard real quick.

Yeah, what do you got?

Well, good afternoon.

Mayor and council.

Let me share my screen really quick.

So today I'll be running through the dashboard, uh, the new council dashboard.

And this is maybe our fourth iteration of it.

So let's see here.

So a couple things, this is built together.

Isn't kind of their terminology.

Office of performance management could not have done this without the help from a lot of different departments.

If your comms, uh Kate's group in the back, we've got economic development that helped us out with this as well.

So it takes a village just to keep this going.

So a couple of things is that fortunately we get to have some of those nice and shiny things that uh communications is rolling out.

So we've been able to incorporate as many of the kind of new standards and branding that they have that you just kind of saw.

We've incorporated a lot of that into our dashboard.

Seeing the icons, colors, different things like that.

Um, and then a change with this uh version of our dashboard that you're gonna kind of that will be a little different than what we had in previous years is that if the previous years we really focused on those action items and like the status of those action items that were all part of like the council goals uh like process and generated where this year we're really focusing in on the metrics that were established during our council goal setting.

So that's where this dashboard is different.

It's really just around the metrics and that and and those items.

I'll also say that not all the metrics have all been developed yet.

We will be working through these policy groups to try and establish a lot of those.

So, like working with Katie's group to say, okay, how do we build that Ben specific index?

What does that mean?

You know, outreach and touching base with you and others and trying to figure out what that is, and then as that's developed, as is calculating, we'll be adding it to the dashboard and then rolling it out to everybody.

So uh, okay.

Another thing, uh, and I'll just kind of want to uh you know the city's own horn because again, this didn't happen alone.

In previous versions, we've kind of I don't want to say we stumbled our way through, but we learned a lot every time and like kind of iterated on that.

This last dashboard where we kind of had those cards.

If you guys remember we had the action item, the status and the thumbs up thumbs down, right?

Well, at the same time, City of Scottsdale was kind of going through their uh process of setting goals and everything, and they came up with their stuff that looked we were very similar.

And now Ezrifu provides um a little different platform than what communication has.

We use Esri to build our stuff, which is our GIS provider.

They saw these two things, they said, hey, that's a good idea, let's mash them up.

So they mash them up, and now that is the standard that they roll out to all other communities on how to build dashboards and do different things like that.

So kind of cool.

So we this learning process has been fruitful in helping out.

So all right, so jumping in, this is our main council page again.

Uh much like the website, we've got those anchor points at taught at the top to help you kind of navigate down to the different dashboards.

Uh we've got uh these icons which kind of take you into the individual dashboards, and I'll I've got to move some stuff here, sorry.

Okay, so I'm gonna jump into like the look and feel of what a dashboard looks like.

And I want to say that we've also taken the approach as I jump into this.

We've also taken the approach of thinking about the end user and with it.

So uh we're looking at meeting the WCAG standards and stuff like that.

We've built in our translation right here into the various languages of the dashboard and everything like that.

When people are looking at our individual cards, again, we've brought those cards forward from that previous version when they're looking at things like this.

That's screen readers can read that, tell them the numbers, and then explain what it is that they're looking at to help them out.

So we've taken that kind of uh tried to take that approach that communications is taking with our dashboard.

So at the top, we've just got our goal.

We go a little bit in each one of the dashboards, we go a little bit into like just describing a little bit more about the metrics or what that goal is about, and then we get into those specific performance metrics.

We're looking at the metrics themselves in each one of these.

So, for instance, uh this reduced crashes by 10%.

What we've tried to do is where we have the 10% or 20% reduction and stuff like that.

We've calculated that out to say this is our goal, the actual hard number that we're trying to meet, make that easier for people.

We don't expect them to try and look back somewhere in our system, find out what we were for the last biennium and then free.

That's just that's too onerous.

So the other thing I want to note for council is that in this case, if you see these, they say since July 1.

And then if you look at like our PCI, it says 2024.

So this is where we get into two different types of metrics.

So some of these we can measure on a fiscal biennium, like when we're looking at all this stuff, and then others, for instance, when Jonathan was talking, we get a lot of that information kind of in the rears.

It's a previous year, or you know, it's a look back and it's on a calendar year, and that's where we're trying to know like what year are you looking at, or is this um kind of from the beginning of the biennium moving forward?

The other thing we provide uh when you get to the info tab is just kind of links to out to if you see that we've got one to the Ben Police Hub right there.

We've got a link out here to transportation hub, and we kind of try and describe what these different things are.

Um so the screen readers are looking and they're they're pulling information about this.

Unfortunately, it can't necessarily link them out to that.

And you'll notice too that with our metrics, it's just kind of what we're doing this year.

We know a lot of times people want to look at the historical stuff, and that's where our kind of our data hubs.

Hold on.

That is where I gotta hide some stuff.

Okay.

That is where our data hubs come in to help us out.

Our data hubs, again, you guys have heard about those and probably use them over time.

The data hubs really are where we have a lot of that historical information.

A lot of that information allows a user to deep dive into it.

So this will provide the kind of cross biennial look at information data, different things like that.

Um, and they're built out depending on what it is to be mobile friendly as well.

Uh, like for instance, uh going into I'll reopen this dashboard, didn't realize it had it.

You know, when we open when we build a lot of these things again, it's gonna ask you, it's like, do you want to look at it on mobile?

Do you want to look at a full desktop?

Again, trying to make sure that the users are looking at that.

Uh and then the other thing I want to kind of highlight is we are also looking at trying to make this very mobile friendly for everybody.

So I'm gonna switch to developer mode really quick, make sure I do this right.

Just trying to give you a picture of why I this is one of the reasons why I think that um Ezra saw what we were doing with those cards because it really does allow you to scale really well and kind of get that information.

So this is a look at what that kind of mobile version is and how users might access it on a phone and everything.

That's why it's about 50%.

50% that's what we're pretty much seeing too for what limited stuff we can look at it on our side as well.

So it's we know that's how a lot of people are um accessing it.

I would say when it comes to our dashboard and the dashboards have been great, especially on the metric side, because we know staff look at it and say, oh, that's our guiding light, that's what we're using to kind of work towards and everything.

So when we're looking at the non-mobile versions, we actually suspect that's mainly staff that are looking at it when it's non-mobile.

So yeah.

So questions?

Anything you have.

Looking great.

Looks exciting.

I remember the early versions of this.

Yeah, it was pretty good.

It was it was rough, but it was good because it was starting this path of getting transparency and having all this information that we can send people to, which is amazing.

Um, and then our staff can use too.

So I think it's just it looks better and better.

Looks great.

Do you want to just the housing is pretty impressive?

The housing data hub, especially.

I think that was launched recently too.

Yeah, that's been amazing.

Yeah, so that again, so we have data hubs, we have a housing data hub, we have a fire data hub, a police data hub, and a transportation data hub.

So those are kind of the deeper numbers.

So yeah, the deep where we're we know those are the those are the data points that we hear most from the community of like what's happening when we're looking at information requests and different stuff.

So we've started focusing in those areas again.

We're looking at our these would be our ONA goals for this biennium and kind of where we're at with it.

And again, the users can come in and click, open up a data hub.

And for council, those numbers are real time, they get loaded every night.

So those if you ever are like how many housing units have we built so far, you can go right there and it's right out front.

So that's the two-year toll.

That is what we're supposed to do within this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So far this way.

So yeah, so we've got our housing.

So again, our data hubs are built very much the same.

We've kind of borrowed from kind of that look and feel from the council dash or the the prior council dashboard and how we're gonna put stuff together, and it kind of takes you into uh, like I said, more of that in depth.

Sorry, it's very laggy.

I'm right now on my with my mouse, and breaks out a lot of numbers so that so, for instance, this is the housing needs stuff with Jonathan and others were talking about, right?

We have curated and taking those like items that again we know the community wants and wants to know more about, and we start focusing in on creating specific dashboards or reports in those areas, and the hubs are there to consolidate it.

So you can say, well, I want all things housing, right?

So when you think of the transportation side, you you can find sidewalk mileage, you can find winter ops, but you can find GoBond, you can find a whole bunch of other things that aren't necessarily related to TMD, and again, using that approach like communications looking at is the community doesn't know our departments, they're just like, I don't know, it's transportation, it's roads, it should be here.

How do I look and find it?

Yeah, so perfect.

All right, any other questions?

All right, thank you so much for giving that to us.

All right, we're gonna take a little break and we will be back at six for our business meeting.

I think we're ready.

All right, we are gonna go ahead and get started.

So we will call to order the business meeting of the Benn City Council for this evening.

Um let's go ahead and do roll call start on your end, Councilor Platt.

Steve Platt again.

Megan Norris, she her, Megan Perkins, she her, Melanie Keebor, she her.

Mike Riley, he, him.

Ari Mendez, he, him.

Gina Franzosa, she her.

Great.

We are all here.

Um, and we do not have any proclamations tonight, so we're gonna go right into council action and reports.

Um there are no letters, um, appointments.

We are currently recruiting for city committees.

For anyone interested, um, go to our website to look at those and potentially apply.

Um, and then we'll just go through our council action reports.

Go ahead.

Council Friends.

Great, thanks.

Um, on October 9th, I attended a tour of Saran Bioscience, um, which with two of my fellow counselors, and uh that was that was great for me because I have never worked in the biomedical field, and so I learned a lot, and it's kind of amazing the advanced science that happens in our community.

They're expanding in the Juniper Ridge area, so it was a really um exciting tour of uh of an exciting business.

It's part of a growth sector for our community, which is awesome.

Um, and then just yesterday I attended the Ben Central District Business Association board meeting.

Um I attended online, so I had a hard time actually hearing what they were saying, but they uh had a lot of questions for me and Cyrus Mooney about um the status of the City Hall project, the bottle drop, the Hawthorne Bridge, Franklin Avenue, all the things, all the things that we all care about as well.

So um really appreciate that group's engagement.

And then also last evening I attended the Southern Crossing Neighborhood Association annual meeting where they um gave Ryan Oester a really hard time about the read market and bond roundabout, but he handled it expertly, and um they recruited four new board members.

So excited for that neighborhood association.

That's it.

Thanks, Councilor Mendis.

Yeah, um Friday, October 3rd, uh, along with Councillor Riley.

I attended a site tour of one of our safe parking sites uh just to see how these perform on the ground in different contexts and uh looking at how they can be provided at low cost and also at relatively low impact to the neighbors.

Um this is a key part of our housing strategy to house people at all different levels who need it.

Um, and so that was great.

Um Monday October 6th.

Uh I joined the uh the courthouse, the county courthouse tour, which was a lot of fun uh fun.

It's interesting to see how the needs of the county's courthouse are um being met, the expanding needs of a growing county, and also how it how it sits in the local context of a really busy part of our city.

Um this morning I uh had a meeting with Bob Townsend, the director of Cascade's transit to get answers to some of the questions about how the temporary uh funding increase that the legislature provided will translate into better transit service here.

Um so I'm looking forward to hearing more from his presentation to all of us, I believe, in March of next year.

So that's coming down the road, but um transit's a really important part of meeting our safety and mobility goals.

Uh I will just say that I'm counting down the days until December 4th, when it will have been a full 12 months since a fatal crash occurred on our public roadways.

We've got 50 days to go.

This is a big deal, and um I'm really hoping that we make it.

This is this is the reason why we do things like lower speed limits and uh install traffic calming.

Um so it's it's paying off in a really big way.

All right, thank you, Council Rayleigh.

Um I uh wanted to just share a couple things.

Um two events I participated in.

I just wanted to express my gratitude to the organizations for organizing them and all the people who showed up.

One was OSU Cascades, um was uh helped celebrate First People's Day this past Saturday at the campus, and um a whole range of people from the Warm Springs um tribe came up and we had dancing and arts and crafts and um Captain Ray Moody, one of the tribal council members welcome people, so I just wanted to thank everybody for participating in that.

And then the environmental center or organized something called Latin Heritage celebration.

I think it was a week and a half ago, also on Saturday, um, at the Open Space Events Center, and there was a lot of great turnout, and um yeah, it was just a great celebration of that part of our community.

I attended the home meeting that happened about a little over a week ago where they talked about credit enhancement and revolving loan funds.

The chamber does something called Ben 101.

It was focused on growth, how we're growing and where we're growing from here.

Myself and Brian Rankin from the city was there, and Rachel Colton from Ben Park and Recreation District.

Did a ride along with Jason Galt and Sherry Meisel, learning more about homeless issues and particularly people who are camping, whether it's in vehicles or tents, and just sort of the challenges with that across the community and their work to kind of support those folks and also move them along when they when you know they can't continue to camp at a spot.

So it was interesting to just see how they go about their day-to-day work in the community.

And then a couple nights ago, I participated in the whole farm neighborhood district board meeting.

Awesome.

Okay.

Council Perkins.

Just three things to highlight.

Today the the mayor and and um Eric King, we were able to attend the latest uh Bend Business Roundtable, which is um, I think a really um important and collaborative way for um business um owners and and and business people in our community to to really talk with the city of Bend and also um share ideas about um some policy initiatives that we have.

Uh we had B Dab, uh the Bend uh economic development advisory board um and a lot of what we talked about you heard uh tonight earlier at our at our work session about economic development.

Um the BDAB also um looked a little bit again at neighborhood commercial and continue sort of to to uh delve into that as we as we go forward.

Um we had a really um interesting conversation about electrification and um BDB has been you know so involved in and so integral to um a lot of these important conversations that we're having.

So DDEB actually asked for extra meetings.

Um so we are having extra meetings to kind of go through the economic development strategy and um just really be able to get it'll be a time to get more feedback, and so that was I think that was a maybe a first for me in my time on council, which is which is really great.

Uh last week um I was able to attend the Pacific Northwest Regional Energy Symposium, which was um a group of of a large group of Pacific Northwest utilities, um gas and electric um and uh coming together to talk about um mainly a lot about what what kind of resources we have in our community when it as it comes to energy.

Um and um the the highlight for me was this um this incredible study that has been done about resource adequacy um in the Pacific Northwest, which I'm happy to share with the rest of council.

Um basically saying that we have a pretty big risk in our community right now because of the fact that we have um a lot of like multi-day winter events um and you know what we need to be doing um to make sure that we can be providing enough energy for everybody um in those moments.

Um and you know, a lot of talk about how you know everyone wants energy supplies to be reliable, affordable, and sustainable, and how hard it is to meet all three of those things.

Um a lot of even the electric utilities were talking about the importance of optionality and uh flexibility and how we meet our sustainable goals, and um that every time we eliminate an option, it makes it more difficult to provide reliability, affordability, and sustainability.

Um and the electric utilities also talked about how the electric system is critically reliant on natural gas for reliability right now, um, and that um we have to do everything in parallel.

So that was the the sort of the the broad message of that is that we need to be having these energy conversations um working with each other, um not against each other.

So that's all.

Great, thank you.

Great.

Um the environment and climate committee met and just a few highlights from there.

Um our staff for uh the environment and climate committee, Cassie and Megan were able to attend the Mountain Collective Summit in Colorado and um collaborate with other mountain towns um as it relates to climate.

So I think that that was really great, and it just goes to show how that our staff is growing and how they have the ability to go out and communicate with with other um jurisdictions and learn how um they are dealing with uh with climate as well.

And then um yeah, they also passed um the grant um community grant partnership program awards, and so those it was 150,000 total, and there are about seven different projects that were awarded.

I'll just, you know, some of the highlights were Ben Redmond and Habitat for Humanity, COCC, the Environmental Center, Ben Next, Commute Options, Grow and Give, and I would say a lot of them have to do with energy efficiency, composting, and school carpooling.

So that was great.

I'm really happy that we could do that.

And then I also went to Saran Biotech.

I think it was yeah, just fascinating to learn what's happening in our local community, and so exciting.

And we appreciate Edco for hosting and organizing all this for the counselors.

There's been a series of these happening, and so it's been really great to go out and visit our local businesses and learn more.

But I think it was just really to me.

There were two big things, and they're the biggest things for our city right now.

Housing and transportation are what I heard.

And so, you know, I know counselor Platt and I were talking, we were trying to deal with uh traffic getting back home, and we're like, wow, this this intersection on Empire is uh is brutal.

And so um, and then the housing for our growing workforce, and um, you know, a lot of folks we were hearing uh don't live in Ben, they can't afford it, and so they're they're so how do we provide more housing so that folks that work here um can live here, and so um it's really important.

That's all I have.

Great, and uh echoing that that tour, the same kind of things that we came away from.

You know, Saran is just as as Council Francosa said is leading edge, and they want to expand to offer uh jobs both with those that are college graduates and those that are right out of high school, and the CEO of that corporation said basically nobody that I employ lives here in Benn.

Um, and so that gives me even more impetus on the home committee that I also attended to really find what are the innovative ways that we can bring more housing to bear as quickly as possible.

Our council has thrown down the gauntlet with the ONA numbers saying we're gonna try to make almost 4,000 homes uh in the next in the next two years in our community, and so we are pulling out all the stops to try to make that happen all across the AMI range.

Everything from the low ends of the AMI all the way through the full market rate housing, and that's important to us and it's important to us that we do in a sustainable way in a way that respects our climate future as well.

Um so I'm really focused on that goal overall, and then also the Aubrey Butte folks uh at their neighborhood association were very concerned about the way people travel around our community, and we're essentially intensely interested in the automated traffic enforcement that we could provide at various intersections and various uh sections of road to try to make our roads more safe for our community.

That's all I've got.

Thanks.

Great, thank you.

Um so at our last meeting, I was actually at the um the League of Cities Conference.

We had our uh League of Cities Board meeting the day before.

So um, and that was a great conference.

Um, Council Perkins joined up there for a couple of days, um, and we had some great opportunities to hear from speakers.

Um, I helped uh facilitate a panel on housing that had some of our housing providers here talking with other cities about what we're doing.

Had a couple of people asking us to send along um our SEC's methodology and how we tier them for housing, they want to replicate that in their communities to help get smaller homes built and reduce some barriers.

So always good to connect with people across the state at those.

Um we uh some of the recent things we a couple of counselors took a tour of the courthouse that's being built, which was really neat to see, um, and is soon gonna be kind of enclosed and onto the next phase of development there, but we'll really provide a lot better space for um our justice system here in Deschutes.

Um had a meeting with the downtown uh Ben Business Association yesterday.

Um they continue to be on track with those main street um goals and structures that we helped them become a part of, which is really great, and um hopefully are gonna be putting together a nice um Christmas lighting and a new place.

Actually, the corner where Peace Corner is where that park is with that really large tree, much bigger um than the usual one.

So um they're still working on that, but hopefully that will be a great community event coming up later this year.

Um have continued the weekly meetings of the district mapping advisory committee for the county.

Um we had our meeting today.

Um I just want to say for the community um there is a listening session tomorrow, 5:30 to 7:30 at the county building.

There will be some maps for people to look at and react to, really um encourage people to show up to that um and to give us their feedback on the work that we are doing.

Um, and then last week another highlight was um going to the um latest um habitat for humanity development that they have finished, and it's actually a milestone for them of 250 homes built by Bend Habitat for Humanity, which is great.

Um, and we have been funding them through awards almost every year since 2004.

So we've really been investing in um that affordable homeownership in in our area.

Um, and it was just a really cool event to get to talk to the homeowners and see the new homes and see the people living in them and living in our community.

So the last item I had was just to do with our schedule.

And looking at next year, you might have got some calendar events, and there's some some quarters we're gonna skip a work session or we have a natural break.

In looking at that, staff had asked if council might entertain the idea of a longer break in the summer, either taking all of July off or all of August off from meetings.

Since we are meeting very regularly now, pretty strong cadence for the staff to keep up with, getting a lot of work done.

If council's amenable to that, the city manager's office is going to send out a survey basically to us as to which we might prefer on that month-long break.

Um, and that would mean that we would maybe wouldn't take as many work sessions off in the other parts of the year, but would um that are right adjacent to that summer, but would then um, for instance, maybe we'd go through all of June instead of skipping one in June.

Um so Eric, I don't know if there's anything else you want to say to that.

Okay.

I'm seeing some head nods to consider that.

Okay.

Yeah, why don't we send out the survey and see see what people say and we'll come back to that um later.

And that is it for council reports.

Thanks, everybody.

Um, we're gonna get into visitors section next.

I'm gonna try to log on the zoom here while I'm doing this.

Um, so we have quite a few people here tonight.

The usual rules apply.

Um we ask people to address us as a body.

You'll come on up to the seat here.

Um we will have this timer up here.

Everyone gets two minutes since we have a lot of people tonight.

Gonna try to hold people to that two minutes so everyone gets their turn and we're not running over too much.

Um, please keep your comments um respectful and don't use any kind of language that would disrupt our meeting.

Um, if you're not able to follow the rules, I'll ask you to stop or take away your time, or maybe ask you to leave.

But I don't think we're gonna have any problems with that tonight.

Um, we have a few online speakers, and we have a lot of folks here in person.

So I'm gonna start with um some in-person speakers and then maybe go over to actually I'm gonna do one in-person and then go over to a couple online, and then we'll come back to um there's a lot of folks here on electrification.

I'm gonna have you all kind of go together.

So um, let's start with Mary Murphy.

And then when you sit down, you should say um your name and whether you live in the city of Bend, and then go ahead and make your comment.

Good evening.

Mary Murphy, Bend Resident.

Uh I work with the Latino Community Association of Central Oregon.

And I'm here uh as a partner in the Verde Pines project, um, but also as an advocate for affordable housing.

Uh LC is a proud um to be a community partner with Verde Pines.

It's a hundred and twenty-eight unit affordable housing development near Caldera High School.

Um, our role as a nonprofit organization is that we'll be in leading uh leading intentional outreach to ensure working families, uh especially Latin A families know about these housing opportunities.

And then we'll also be providing on-site services once tenants move in, helping families to thrive, connect, and build long-term stability.

So this model isn't just about constructing units, it's about building community.

Every day families come to LCA asking for help finding housing.

One young couple recently came in with their baby and said, We're staying with my cousin, but we need to move out soon.

Both parents are working full-time, earning $20 an hour, yet, even with steady jobs, they can't find a place they can afford with rental applications costing around $70 a person.

Waiting lists takes years, um, and families are often turned away for lack of credit or rental history.

When our team asked where they are staying, they quietly said we sleep on the floor in the laundry room because we want some privacy.

Their stories aren't rare.

Many essential workers, including teachers, city employees, even nonprofit staff, fall below the 60% AMI threshold.

Verdate pines will give them a chance at real stability.

This project represents 128 affordable housing, likely housing over 400 residents, children who will fill classrooms, walk safely to school, and join sports teams and student leadership.

Stable affordable affordable housing allows adults to focus on their jobs, health, and families, reducing stress, increasing productivity, and creating the foundation for lasting financial and emotional stability.

Approving this tax exemption means Verde Pines can move forward, securing affordable homes for decades to come, strengthening our schools, neighborhoods, and local workforce.

Thank you for your time and for supporting a bent where families can belong and thrive together.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you.

Um, and then I saw John Fisher signed up online, but I see you here in person, John.

Are you ready?

Yeah, I'm ready.

Okay, if you want to come up and give your comment, please.

Good evening, council.

Good to see you all.

Um, I'm John Fisher.

I'm here on behalf of the Old Bend Neighborhood Association, and I'm joined by Lauren Paz, who chairs the parking committee.

Um, and we're here to offer some proactive communication on the ongoing parking district plan.

Rest creation will remind you that we're in uh the plan information window of phase one of the parking plan overhaul, um, which basically includes the entire um old bend neighborhood.

And um I'll say to date, the trust level has been a little tenuous, and I think communication could be improved at the neighborhood level.

Um it's our goal kind of at as the neighborhood districts to facilitate these types of neighborhood discussions.

And so we've talked to a lot of people, heard a lot of rants, and um collected a lot of feedback, and we tried to distill that down into uh salience points, and we sent a letter to council today.

Um, so hope you get a chance to look at that.

Um yeah, so really just here to ask for you to read that and consider it.

Um, overall, we think council is on the right track with with the direction given.

Um we're all coming to realize that managed parking is is a part of the livable future in our neighborhood, and that can be contentious at times, but um, I think it's a critical phase for good communication for something that's so sensitive to people.

And um, so that's what we're here for is just to communicate about that and to offer our support.

Um the uh the old Ben neighborhood district is a volunteer board, the parking committee is a volunteer board put in place um under your commission, and um wish to be an integral part in the plan formation and management of the old Bedon parking district.

Um that's basically here here to um to just raise the concern to date and uh offer offer our feedback and support and proactive communication and hopefully make that easier moving forward uh make the district as successful as possible.

So that's it.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

And we did we did get your letter, so we will move certainly all we have to do.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me, dokay.

All right, so yeah, we're actually not gonna have any online speakers because you can sign up online and then show up in person and just try to confuse me, but it won't work.

Um, okay.

So we're gonna get into um our in-person uh speakers now.

Um, so um Seth, we'll call in.

Um, he's here for the Rode Pines, and as since he's the developer, we'll call on him during that item.

Yeah, so we will get back to you, Seth.

Okay.

Um, so I'm gonna call up people, and I'm gonna tell who's on deck, so we're just ready to keep going with the folks that we have here today.

So, first is Amelia DeBose, and then after Amelia's gonna be Gary North.

Hi, um, city council and city staff.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

Um, my name is Amelia DeBose.

I'm a Bend resident and a young person that cares about my community.

Um I've been organizing a Bend and nationally for four years now.

I can safely say that there's no justice for minority groups and marginalized communities without climate justice and vice versa.

Um, aside from being an organizer, I've been a human for 18 years.

I've worried about my friends' safety when their neighbors have had to evacuate because of a fire.

I've worried about lung disease and water quality and the consequences of our system killing people every single day.

Me and my friends and my generation do not deserve to inherit the earth and the dangerous systems you've created and upheld.

I'm asking you to be a part of making the world better for all the people I care about and all the people you care about.

Um a lot of work needs to be done, but a strong climate pollution fee is a fantastic start.

Thank you again for this opportunity to testify, and I will see you at the October 22nd work session.

Great, thank you.

Thanks.

Gary North, I'm well on up, and then after Gary will be Rowan Lucas.

Good evening, Mayor and Counselors.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight.

Um Gary North, I'm a resident of the city of Bend.

Um, electrification is a tough issue, and we all want clean air, water, um, and but we also want an affordable place to live.

There's been since 2020 uh 50% increases in utility cost to our residents, and there's been numerous other fees passed through the city over that period of time as well.

We all know that housing affordability is a critical, critical issue right now.

My ask is only that you consider that at the continue to consider that at the top of the list when we talk about electrification and imposing fees, um, additional fees for non-compliance or whatever that looks like.

Um, it just I think it sends the wrong message to the community.

I think there's other ways.

Um, Cascade Natural Gas is working pretty hard on reducing their carbon footprint um through projects that um not Lambfill and some other pilot projects that are working they're working on right now, and I think we should let that stuff play out to see how that goes and collect that data to see how we move forward in reducing our carbon footprint.

So thank you.

Thank you, Gary.

All right, Roan Lucas, and after Rome be Sherry Helt.

Hi, I'm not sure.

I'm Ron Lucas, and I'm a Ben resident.

Um, City Council and staff.

Thank you for allowing my friends and I the opportunity to testify tonight.

Um, as I said, my name is Rowan Lucas.

I am a biology student, SUCC, and an advocate in the community.

I deeply appreciate all the time and work you have put into supporting a climate pollution fee and electrification policy.

I ask that you keep that dedication going as we move into another year of Ben's legacy.

The use of fossil fuels has an incredible history, one evident with how consistent and reliable it is as an energy source until you look a little bit deeper and realize it's not as amazing as once thought.

One thing I've learned to understand is when you find yourself in a hole, you stop digging.

The use of fossil fuels and natural gas have become so intertwined with American culture and has become globalized to the point that we are now actively being strangled.

To put this into perspective, it feels almost impossible to feel or impossible to tell if we are still breathing or if we just got comfortable being moments away from death, and the bodies under fossil fuel industry's fee is uncountable at this point.

When it comes to the general public, gas companies and fossil fuel fossil fuel industry at large often deal in bad faith and deceitful marketing strategies.

With that said, the conversation around what energy sources are going to be suitable, suitable for housing and building is foggy.

However, I would like to leave you with a question to consider for October 2nd's meeting.

Do you remember the rhythm of the human breath and are you still breathing?

Is the community still breathing?

Thank you for the time.

Thank you, Rowan.

Sherry Helt.

I don't know, she might have had to leave.

Okay, we'll come back in case she comes back up.

Um, Travis Davis, I see you here.

And then after Travis will be Michaela May.

Good evening, Mayor Keebler, City Councillors.

Uh, first of all, thank you so much for everything you do for our community because uh just hearing your report out of how engaged you are, um it's inspiring.

So thank you.

My name is Travis Davis.

I operate a business in the city of Bend.

Um, I do not live within the city limits.

I'm a current EdCo board member, Chamber of Commerce member, and a former BDAB member.

However, I'm here today to just represent myself.

Uh thank you for the opportunity to provide input on the proposed electrification policy initiative.

Like many of you, I enjoy as many outdoor activities as I possibly can, and I want to protect our environment for generations to come.

I believe we as individuals and as a community need to do everything we can to protect that environment.

However, just as economic success does not make up for a ruined ecology, achieving a zero carbon footprint will not lessen the negative effects of making Bend unaffordable for our community members living near the poverty level.

My primary concern tonight is with the proposed uh associated fees that are that are being proposed, excuse me.

Most directly, any additional fees on housing development will increase housing costs and will decrease housing production, coming at a time when the city needs to produce more housing than ever before.

I'm also concerned about the future electrical rates of jurisdictions like the city of Bend attempt to push electrification faster than the infrastructure can accommodate.

As previously mentioned, specifically for Pacific Power, however, the rate increases have been 15%, 21%, 11%, and 10% in four successive years.

Over 60% increase in the past five years.

And the capacity for current development is a real concern.

So what is accelerating that curve going to do to our community members who are barely getting by today?

My last affordability concern for your consideration is the general fund.

I fear that we don't have the extra dollars available to defend the city if the inevitable legal challenge to this proposed fee is filed.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Travis.

All right, Michaela May, come on up, and after Michaela will be Jeff McGill of Ray.

Um, Mayor Kiddler, City Council and staff, thank you for this opportunity to testify.

Um, my name is Michaela May, and I'm a junior at Caldera High School.

Um, I'm here in support of a strong climate pollution fee.

You have a big opportunity to take strong climate action with this policy, and I'll tell you a little bit about why it matters to me.

I have lived in Bend my entire life, and like most, if not all of our community, I've lived and learned in buildings powered by natural gas.

And for over a decade, I have lived within two miles of a natural gas pipeline.

Uh research has shown that exposure to natural gas as well as the pipelines that transport it through our communities pose significant risks to public health.

Transitioning our infrastructure off of natural gas to cleaner alternatives reduces the risks that natural gas poses to our community.

Passing a strong climate pollution fee is the first step to protecting our community from the dangers of natural gas as well as of the climate change that natural gas um emissions contribute to.

My attention will be on you October 2nd.

Our community's public health is in your hands.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

All right, Jeff McGillivray, and then after Jeff will be Jade O'Hara Vatchos.

Mayor, Counselor, City Staff, appreciate the opportunity to speak.

Name's Jeff McGilbury.

I'm not a Bend resident.

I uh work for UA Local 290 Plumbers and Steam Fitters.

We represent plumbers, steam fitters, and HVACTICs.

Um I've been doing this for 30 years, uh so I have a little insight on it.

Uh today I'm just coming to talk to you.

I actually live in Eugene and uh wanted to come over and firsthand tell you how a similar policy worked out in Eugene and uh offer a little insight on that.

Uh so in 2023, the city council imposed uh uh limiting the energy choices for the the folks there and raising our energy costs with a natural gas ban.

Uh in the end, when they looked at it, it made very little difference in the carbon footprint.

And keeping in mind, uh eWeb, their Eugene Water Electric that supplies our power is almost all hydro, so it's actually a lot cleaner than Pacific Power over here.

No offense to Pacific Power, but uh it is.

And uh so it really didn't make a difference.

There's polling done.

The citizens of Eugene were not in favor of it.

The counselors went with out the data with the polling saying that the the citizens did not want that, and they voted five to three to put it in immediately.

So it really broke the trust between the citizens and the council.

We're still do still dealing with that today.

The pressure rised high enough that uh the council rescinded it.

And so uh we're still trying to work together.

It's always gonna be better to try to get the electric folks and the and the utilities together, the different utilities, and work together on dual fuel systems and and you know, other alternative RNGs, hydrogen, everything else.

Uh it it just I would just caution going down that road that it it could really cause a lot of friction between everybody and uh you know the the I would I would be more than willing if for any of you to hook you up with some of the Eugene City Council folks to talk about that.

And uh I thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Thanks, Joe.

All right, Jade.

Um, and then I saw Sherry Hell is here, so Cher, you'll be next.

Mayor Kepler and City Council.

I'm grateful for the uh the staff's focus on electrification, and thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Jade O'Hare Volachos, and I am living in Bend.

I'm a student at COCC, and I'm studying to become an environmental engineer.

I'm asking you today to develop a significant climate pollution fee.

When I was young, I faced major food insecurity.

A lot of the food I relied on I got from my grandma's garden.

If there was bad weather, we wouldn't be able to eat.

If we let climate change continue, we can expect a lot more bad weather ahead.

Growing food is something that is becoming more difficult by the day.

Farmers are needing to provide more irrigation, soil is losing its nutrients and threats and threatens livestock and water availability.

All of these examples I've just listed are caused by air pollution.

The very chemicals that are coming out of our natural gas infrastructure residential infrastructure.

This is and will be a more common reality for kids and families all across America if we don't take action today.

In 2023 alone, 13.5% of households face food insecurity.

That's 18 million households, disproportionately of minority groups.

This is for a multitude of reasons.

Climate change is a driver of that reality.

Climate change is a justice issue.

We need to take action today.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

All right, Sherry Hull, and after Sherry will be Alan Spector.

Thank you so much for letting me speak.

Mayor Keebler, uh, Mayor Pro Tem Perkins, and members of the council.

I wanted to thank you for all of your work and your service.

I know that it is a lot to ask of people.

So I just wanted to have a second of gratitude.

Um I want to talk about shared goals.

I think most people uh live in Bend and have moved here because we like our environment and we want to be kind to the earth and we share the sentiment of having a low carbon footprint.

Um we do a lot of hiking here, biking, kayaking, things that are very low carbon.

My husband and I in our business, we share those same goals.

And one of the things that we like about the goal that we have set for ourselves is we joined the Blue Sky program, which makes our electricity cleaner in our business.

And we did that in 2008, which you all know was a very rough economic year.

But it was something that we were able to choose for ourselves and invest in for our community because we appreciate the community support for our business, and we wanted to do something back for the community.

We have continued to do that for many years.

One of the things that I wanted to highlight this policy for you, this this um that we joined was because it is something that we did on our own.

And I would love to see you all consider policies that are incentives and have people opt into them.

I think that there's many people that share the same goals, and you would see that they would do that.

Many businesses share the same goals.

Today I was with a builder that had built an all-electric building.

Um, and I think that incentivizing these policies would be well received.

The the thing about incentives, I know you don't have a lot of money, but you do have permits and permits allow time.

Giving people a priority for doing the goals that you would like, I think you would see results, and then you'd have um data to bring back to bring policies further in the future.

Thank you, Sherry.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Alan Vector, and then Brad Archuleta.

Uh Mayor Keebler, Mayor Pro Tem Perkins, uh members of the city council.

On behalf of Cascade Natural Gas, we're very proud to serve the community.

As we've said before, it's not something that we take lightly or for granted.

Uh, we also attended the regional energy symposium and came to a stronger understanding with not just the gas industry speaking, but the electric industry as well, that we're at a major inflection point, you know, in our region when it comes to resource adequacy and grid reliability.

And that there's things that need to be balanced, a balance uh between growing demand, sustainability, affordability, reliability.

And there's an opportunity for all of us to come together to understand our responsibility as a gas utility to work with our electric providers in tandem to optimize the energy mix in our homes.

And so I've obviously um we're not necessarily supportive of a gas fee, but we do want to come to the table.

We do want to be good partners.

Uh we're going to be launching our dual fuel heat pump pilot effort uh starting in November.

We will be inviting uh city council to uh take a look at the work we're doing.

We want maximum transparency on it.

We're gonna be uh we've identified 24 natural gas homes.

We're gonna be putting electric state-of-the-art heat pumps in all of those homes and connecting those systems together in support of the things that we're talking about, resource adequacy.

Uh looking at the uh carbon mix of the electric versus the gas and ramping that on and off when the fuel mix is using gas and coal so that we can take advantage of the direct use of natural gas, and uh also looking at managing peak, potentially both for the electric and the gas systems.

So we just ask that we have the opportunity to continue to be partners in the community and uh see allow uh that data to uh come forward and to see that pilot through before decisions are made.

Thank you.

Thanks, Alan.

Brad Archuleta and then Brennan Breen will be last.

I have a letter to the council members.

Yeah, thank you.

Hi there, thank you.

Uh Mayor Kubler, Protestant Mayor Perkins and Council members.

My name is Brad Archuletta.

I'm a business agent for local 290 plumbers, stampers, and gas distribution workers.

Um I'd represent over 5300 workers in the Northwest, Southern Washington, uh, Oregon, and Northern California.

Um I'll also be emailing you a E3 regional report on energy that was at the uh energy symposium last Thursday that Mayor Perkins was also at.

Electricity is not a source, it's a delivery mechanism.

Sources of electricity for Pacific power, for instance.

49% come from coal, 19% from natural gas, 12% from wind, six percent from hydro, and three percent from solar.

All the others are unspecified.

Your voters are concerned about affordability, reliability of energy.

I heard the term tonight resiliency.

We need resiliency and energy.

70% of your voters are in favor of natural gas.

The citizens of Bend want energy choice.

We need a diverse energy grid in the Northwest.

We are headed into an energy shortfall.

We will need an additional 2500 megawatts by end of 2026.

And 9,000 megawatts by 2030.

That's only four years away.

Forced electrification, putting strain on the grid will result in fires, increased cost, and outages.

Converting from natural gas to electric is not affordable by no means.

For a single home from $8,000 up towards to $30,000 to convert.

I learned a lot at the energy symposium last week that our energy companies are not working together for our energy needs.

They need to work together and plan for the future.

We need to encourage our it or them to generate an energy plan together.

This is the only path to meet our climate goals.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Brendan Green.

Mayor Perkins, City Council and staff.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

And thank you for all the work you do for the community.

I appreciate council's recent focus on housing affordability and electrification policy development.

And I'm here to ask you to develop a strong climate pollution fee as you continue working through this process, especially at your work session next week.

Addressing climate change is absolutely a cost of living issue.

And the longer we take to decarbonize, we know it is going to be more expensive.

Electrification retrofits, we know are significantly more expensive than upfront construction, and we we have the technology and the know-how to build smaller from the start.

Even including RNG and hydrogen resources, we also know that there's just no credible pathway to decarbonizing the gas infrastructure system we have at scale.

So the only livable future uses overwhelmingly renewable electricity, and we need to stop digging the hole deeper.

Yes, we are in an we are in an energy crisis right now, but the solution to that can't be continuing to invest in technology that we know is outdated and is contributing to climate pollution.

A Forest Service study projected that we are already on track for an 80% decline in stream flow in the Cascade region, uh, as well as the Oregon State Climate Assessment from a few years ago projected a 50% decline uh in snowpack statewide by 2100.

So these are huge changes that we have already locked in from climate change, uh, and that is going to have irreversible damage to our tourism, ranching, and forestry industries.

Um environmental stewardship is not optional.

It is a prerequisite to have any prosperous economy and any affordable living situation in central Oregon.

So please keep that in the forefront of your mind moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone, for your comments.

And um, as has been mentioned, we are having a work session on this topic next week.

Starts at 4 p.m.

We don't have public comment at that time, but we will keep all of these comments um in our minds.

And if anyone wants to send anything else to us by email before then, please feel free to do that as well.

Okay.

That will end our public comment period for tonight.

Thanks, everybody.

So that moves us to um our consent agenda item number four.

Mayor, I'd like to like to pull item C from the consent ones.

Okay.

So is there a motion to approve um without item C.

To approve the consent agenda without item C.

Second.

All right, move by Council Garzosa, second by Councilor Riley.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All right, item C, Councilor Francisco.

What was your question?

Um Ryan's just outside the journey.

Right there, okay.

Yeah.

Sorry, we moved.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah.

Um, I wanted to talk about the engineering quarterly reports, and I'm trying to pull it up.

I have to keep the tabs open on my uh thing right now.

Um my comments are kind of general.

Um I really like these, I really like these reports.

I really like to dig into these reports, um, but there's kind of some inconsistencies in the information uh that I find kind of confusing.

So, like on the financial summary page, um, it says the spending by fund, but then the total project cost is is different.

Um, and so uh is it possible to kind of show where the where the money is coming from for those different projects, or is there a way to make it so that it doesn't look like uh you know so it's a little bit clearer about yeah, yeah.

I mean uh right off the bat, this is a tool for council to be able to relay the status of project so we can format this and put it in any shape you want.

So happy to do that.

The way we're doing it now, just for clarity, is when it says the financial summary by fund and it lists all the different funds that the money has been spent against, and the bottom line is the total project cost estimate.

So I can see how that might not be clear the way we've got it written, though.

But yeah, I can we I can talk with you later and we can figure out a way to make that more clear and add some additional language if that helps.

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

I mean, schedule is another um it would be great.

Like generally, I would love to see like you know, where the project started, the original, you know, kind of start date and delays, and if there were delays, why um or if it's ahead of schedule, then you know that's great to see too.

Uh so kind of to see progress over time.

Um, I don't know, what are some of the other hang on one second?

Sorry.

Um it does have a on schedule each one of these has yeah, start date, end date, and then schedule status.

I think it's on schedule of completion anticipated for December 2025.

Um, up there it says that.

I got it.

Yeah, start date, end date, and then in the middle, project schedule and status.

And if there's a significant change to the schedule, that's where we would highlight data.

I think it's very similar format.

Yeah, they all say it.

They all say project schedule and status.

And then they all say on schedule.

So it's like, well, that's great that they're on schedule.

Um, but what is yeah, anyway.

I I I'm used to seeing a schedule that's a little bit more like a calendar format or something like that.

Like, you know, I can we we can talk about it line.

Yeah, if you want to see something different, if council would like some different information, we're happy to provide that.

Awesome.

That's a great.

Um, and then how about um things like how are you tracking?

So this is a track.

So does your team use this tracking document at all, or is this just is it just for a this is a compilation once a quarter, my business team puts this information together, pulling data off the financial system in the city and interviewing each of the PMs to get a project update.

Got it, okay.

Yeah, I um I mean we've we've talked many times about like the Boyd Acres project, you know, not uh getting uh kind of getting cut, you know, from the geo from the larger geobond project.

And so um would that you know how I guess it's um and I I so I'm tracking to kind of see like how that project gets woven back in.

Um and so I didn't know if you know this was a tool where we could expect to see information like that or not this this is on active projects, so Boyd Acres is not an active project.

And secondly, we have a separate geobond quarterly report that is approved by the bond oversight committee that Eric shares um through his counselor message.

And we can we can put these together if you want or do it in some other format, but Boyd Acres would be talked about in the G.

You know, what I'd like to do because we're gonna have a reprioritization exercise.

So all those projects that maybe were cut or trimmed or whatever, as we look to reprioritize as we have more information about the read market overcrossing and the author and grant polls.

I think we want to come to council saying what what do you want to have back on the list, including point acres?

So that there's a plan to build towards that uh in the next couple of months.

Yeah, so board acres is shown in the geobond quarterly report.

Awesome.

Okay, I have a few um suggestions that we can do offline just about how I saw as well in terms of connect with any of you.

Just another sort of little zooming uh uh back out on this topic is you saw the website.

We have project information on the website that that's real time.

I wonder if we could move to a more real time instead of these static reports.

That way at any moment's time, you can just get access.

So I just wanted to take a temperature check because that actually might be more efficient.

If you don't need this report, we can we can take all the information, do it more detail and actually just put it on.

That'd be required by state law if you use the alternative.

No, that's that's if you do a different that's a different item.

That's if you don't do a low bid.

You have to do a quarterly report for like a CMGC or a progressive design bill.

Those that's a smaller set.

But okay, I mean happy to format this in any way council would like to see.

I think if people have feedback to send to Ryan, go ahead and email him on that on formatting stuff.

I think that's fine.

Do we need to approve the quarterly report?

Yeah.

So we need a motion to approve item C.

Sure.

I'll move to approve the engineering quarterly report for quarter one of 20 fiscal year 2026.

Oh, that was a tie.

Councilor Franzosa, second by counselor Mendez.

Um all those in favor?

Aye.

Okay, thanks, Ryan.

All right, that moves us on to item number five.

This is a quasi-judicial public hearing to amend the comprehensive plan map and zoning map to redesignate and rezone 1.93 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to Pacific Crest Middle School for urban area reserve UAR 10 to residential urban medium density RM.

All right, Ian.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, council, because this is a quasi-judicial application.

There's a particular process, you're all sitting as judges wearing metaphorical black robes, and because of that, um, there are some preliminaries that we have to go through.

The first one is to provide counselors with an opportunity to disclose any ex-party contacts or site visits that any of you have had related to the application.

If I attend I do a site visit five days a week at drop off.

I ride my bike by their area.

I don't think that's the site hasn't.

Next, next item.

Does anyone have any actual or potential conflicts of interest or other personal interests that would interfere with the ability to serve as an impartial decision maker in this application?

So Ian, as a as a Ben LePine schools uh employee, is there is there a potential conflict for me in this?

Well, I think the issue is whether the application presents any financial uh benefit or detriment to the employer, your employer, the Ben Le Pine School District.

And I and I don't know that it does.

This is a rezone to create a residential zone.

Right.

And I think the intention is an affordable housing project on this.

Right.

So it's not that's not a benefit the Ben Lapine schools is not benefiting them benefiting.

I I don't know, but I would be careful in assuming that it doesn't at all.

Okay, well, I'm I'm happy to I'm happy to recuse and exit if if necessary.

Up to you, whatever you want to do.

Oh, I think probably wisdom being the better power of Valorai will okay uh just in case.

Sure.

Because of your you're an employee of the school.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh Councilor Platt has uh recused himself and an abundance of caution.

Is there anyone present who wishes to raise the challenge on the basis of bias or personal interest to any of the six council members who are made?

Seeing none, hearing none, assuming none online.

Um the the next the next element is an explanation of state law.

State law requires that all testimony argument and evidence must be directed to the applicable criteria in the Ben Development Code and the comprehensive plan, that the party offering the testimony argument or evidence beliefs are applicable to the application, the failure to raise an issue with sufficient specificity for the decision makers, that's council or other parties to respond to the issue will preclude an appeal to the land use board of appeals on that issue.

The failure of the applicant to raise a constitutional issue or other issue regarding a condition of approval with sufficient specificity to allow the decision maker or other parties to respond to the issue will preclude a claim for damages in circuit court related to that issue or condition.

And then finally, if prior to the end of tonight's public hearing a party requests additional time to present testimony, argument or evidence, the decision maker of the council will allow either a continuance or additional time in its discretion for parties to submit that additional testimony argument or evidence to the record.

That's it.

Okay, I think I forgot we we are officially in an open um public hearing at this point.

Um okay, so I think then next we have our staff presentation.

All right, I think we're good to go.

Uh good evening, Mayor and Councillors.

Um, Nicholas and Nars, associate planner, City of Ben Planning Division.

I'm gonna give a brief presentation on the project as uh PLC PMA 20250298, a comprehensive plan map and zoning map amendment concurrent proposals to rezone an area of land that we're all very unfamiliar with, it sounds like uh from UAR 10, Urban Air Reserve 10 to residential medium density.

So, first little bit of background uh where this is Northwest Crossing Drive between Summit High School to the east of the sites in this red triangle here on the on the presentation here.

Pacific Crest Middle School is just west of the site.

The entire property is actually a 43-acre single unit of land or tax lot that comprises the elementary school, middle school, and then this kind of triangle property.

The rezone and and comp plan amendment is only for this triangle property, this unit of land about 1.93 acres in area.

So what they're proposing to do is to rezone the property from UAR 10.

UAR 10 is a urban area reserve 10-acre minimum.

It's a holding zone.

Typically, you'll find that zone within an urban growth boundary, but outside of city limits in lands that are anticipated to be annexed into the city and urbanized, but have not yet done so.

Um these ones happen to be already annexed, just not zoned, uh, upzoned, I should say, or modernize their zoning, hence it's still UAR 10, and the proposal is to change it to RM, which is a of course a residential zone allows seven to twenty one acres, uh, seven to twenty-one units per acre.

And so I have the a little bit of background on it.

I appreciate the applicant for being here as well.

Um properties owned by Ben Le Pine School District.

Um they have recently declared the site surplus land unnecessary to meet their future development needs for the school district, and they wanted to build housing, they decided to partner with uh Ben Redman Habitat for Humanity.

I believe they're gonna give a short uh presentation as well.

And part of the project is getting the zoning appropriate for the type of residential development anticipated.

To be clear, this is only a proposal considering the rezone of the lands.

Uh, this is not for the housing itself.

We do have concur, we have a uh currently submitted a land division application to separate this unit of land legally because it's again it's still one lot, and then after that, we anticipate a site plan review for the housing itself.

So, folks interested in in the actual housing, there will be a public process separate from this one for the housing itself.

This is just considering whether or not the site is appropriate to be residentially zoned essentially.

So be clear that won't come before the council.

That will be that was the housing itself will not.

It will be a type two process that solicits public engagement, but it will not be a hearing for that housing.

Got it.

To be clear.

Um last little bit of background.

We had a hearing in front of a hearings officer on September 15th.

Uh, the result of that was a recommendation issued to the council for approval of uh both amendments.

Um, and I have an issue summary that recommends a motion in front of you as well.

So the proposal, like I said, this is the current zoning UAR 10.

It's in that green.

Um Discovery Park is just to the northeast of the site, like I said, some summit high school just to the east, and this triangle piece is gonna go from UA proposed to go from UAR 10 to residential medium density, as shown in, I believe that was exhibit A of the package.

To briefly go over, I'll turn my best to be sure with this.

There's a lot to go over, but it's all in the recommendation to city council compliance with the criteria.

Um hearings officer found that it wasn't compliance and recommended approval.

The cons I don't want to go over all the statewide planning goals.

I think we're all pretty familiar with them and comp plan policies.

To summarize, though, many of them encourage placing residential uses that are close to destinations, such as schools, businesses, there's offices and clinics in the in the area.

Um there is the Discovery West Master Plan is a 250-acre master plan that's developing just to the west of the site.

Um a lot of the policies, both again the statewide and and local policies, support upzoning properties to a higher and better use when those amenities are nearby, as is the case with this site.

Um so that's number one and two.

So criteria three is the property currently presented adequate public facilities.

The applicant submitted a transportation report from a uh a licensed transportation engineer, finding that there was adequate public facilities.

Further, they will be reviewed with the subsequent housing development.

So both, in a sense, is provided and will be provided and confirmed through subsequent development as well.

Criteria four, uh, talking about the change in the neighborhood necessary to support these changes.

Uh you know, you would argue that the changes the development of the area around it, mentioned Discovery West, Northwest Crossing Corridor nearby, um, all the residential and commercial development nearby uh makes this site ripe for a rezone as proposed.

And lastly, the transportation planning rule, just asking the question is does if the highest and most intense prop project that it could be approved under the new zone would be entertained.

Does the transportation system support it?

Found that it does with uh review by the transportation engineer.

May I may I ask a question?

Sure.

Um you mentioned there was a hearings officer.

Is that required for comp plan map amendments, or was that uh choice of the applicant or the city?

I believe the type three quadrate judicial process allows either the planning commission or a hearings officer.

Um Ian, are you does that is it so and I believe that the applicant elected to or did no sorry?

I picked this project up midstream from another plan.

Thank you, Renee.

Renee Brook planning manager.

I'm correct.

The code does offer two paths for recommendation to council on map or comprehensive plan or zoning map amendments.

Because this one was limited to just map amendments and no text or policy changes.

It was able to go to the hearings officer rather than planning commission.

So if it had involved amending policies that affected the property, that would have gone to the planning commission.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um is it is a hearing officer simpler or just more you can use.

Um it's uh we contact with hearings officers to do uh process a couple different types of applications in the city.

They are land use attorneys with uh extensive knowledge of Oregon land use law.

Um it being a straightforward uh map amendment.

That was um the code says that these go to hearings officers uh rather than the planning commission.

Um I think it can be either.

That's just how our code has been written for a while.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you, Renee.

And that's pretty much my presentation.

That was the comp plan amendment criteria.

The comprehensive plan dictates the zoning map, and so their concurrent proposals in that does this new zone proposal bring it into compliance.

It would if approved, and they are duplicative criteria for number two.

So that concludes my presentation.

Again, I have a recommended motion to issue summary if there's any questions that have been answered.

Any other questions, information at this point?

Um, I'm gonna ask if the app is there anything you want to present, and you're welcome to.

You don't have to.

It's pretty straightforward.

But hi, I'm Grace Wager.

I'm the vice president of construction with Ben Redmond Habitat for Humanity.

I don't have much to add about the map amendment, but I did just want to give a little overview of the project in general.

So as you know, this was the Ben Lapine School District surplus property that we will be built, hope to build affordable housing on.

15 units is what we have preliminary preliminarily planned, and they will be net zero homes, which is our standard.

Um five of the homes will be deed restricted, employer-based deed restrictions, and all of the homes will be for households earning under 80% AMI on a land lease deed restriction, which you're all very familiar with.

So just wanted to give a little context.

Great.

No, we appreciate that.

Yeah, okay.

Um we did not have anyone sign up for public testimony on this item at all.

So we will go ahead and close the public hearing and go to deliberation and motion.

I move for the first reading of an ordinance amending the Ben Comprehensive Plan Map and Ben zoning map to redesignate and rezone, respectively, approximately 1.93 acres of land in the northeast portion.

Oh boy, of the tax law 171135 D 0030 from urban area reserve UAR-10 to residential urban medium density RM.

Second.

All right.

May I make a comment before we further discussion?

Sure.

Yeah, I just want to say thank you for um taking the initiative and Ben Le Pine Schools isn't here, but this is uh a really important thing to do to kind of look at our land supply, especially land that is in developed areas and see where we can kind of fit in some more housing.

So I looked at the cost that the fees that you guys had to pay, they were not insignificant.

Um, and so yeah, my just my thanks for your leadership on this.

And it's one more important step forward for the city council to help advance affordable housing in the community.

So yeah, yeah.

It's good to do it in partnership with the district.

Yeah, all right.

Um, all right.

All those in favor of the motion.

Um, I think it was did I already say who's seconded?

Yeah, okay.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All right.

Thank you very much.

That motion passes, and we will move on to the our next item.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

We'll wait for Steve to come back out.

Council is asked to adopt resolutions approving qualified rental property tax exemptions for the Cascade Landing and Variedate Clients projects.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and Carrie Bell on Affordable Housing Coordinator in the city's housing division.

I have two qualified rental housing property tax exemption applications for your consideration this evening.

Property tax exemptions are one of the ways that we can incentivize more affordable housing in Bend.

Um, specifically, we are working to meet council's goal to permit 3,942 total housing units by the end of the biennium, including 1,818 deed restricted affordable units at or below 80% AMI.

Staff is recommending an approval of these applications, and we will need council action tonight for which you have recommended motions in the issue summary.

For a little bit of background on this particular tax exemption, this is our low-income 20-year property tax exemption, which is authorized by state statute and the city adopted in the early 2000s via a resolution.

This exemption has been used six times previously: Mountain Laurel Lodge, Discovery Park Lodge, Azmuth 315, Canal Commons, still water crossing, and just last year, the Vasquez First Street Housing portion only of their mixed use development.

The exemption must be authorized by the Ben City Council to take effect, and the exemption applies to tax levies of all districts upon 51% approval.

I'm pleased to let council know that just last night the Ben Lapine School Board unanimously approved these two tax exemptions.

Ben Lapine Schools District, Ben Le Pine School District and the City of Ben make up that 51%.

And with your approval tonight, these would be fully full property tax exemptions for these developers.

The exemption must be applied for before December 1st of the year prior to the exemption.

And council has just 60 days for the from the date of complete application to act, and these applications were complete at the end of August.

So we're right at that decision point.

For clarity on what low income housing means, the units must be deed restricted for qualified households that make 60% area median income or less.

The savings from this exemption must also be passed dollar for dollar to the residents in the form of rent reduction.

And I want to be real clear that not only is this property deed restricted, they um also are required to participate in compliance monitoring with the City of Bend Housing Division during the entire term of the tax exemption.

For perspective on the 60% AMI or less for a household of four, this is less than 68,580 annually, or for a single person household, this would be less than 48,000 annual income.

This is Ben's recreation workforce, frontline medical assistance, retail and restaurant service industry.

First, I'll share on the Cascade Landing.

Uh, this is then the Ponderosa development south of South End of town where Ponderosa abats Highway 97.

It's five garden style walk-up apart garden style walk up apartments uh with a community building in the first phase.

All 98 units um of this development are going to be deed restricted affordable to 60 percent AMI or less.

Uh the 20-year tax uh the 20-year impact to all taxing districts um general levies is estimated just over seven million for the city of Bend, the first year impact, which includes bonds and the local fire option.

The impact is estimated close to 84,000.

The second application uh that we have is for Veriday Pines uh and um Veriday Pines is located on Knott Road.

Um it's actually in the development across from Caldera High School, and this is going to be three apartment buildings with community service amenities within uh one of their buildings.

You um heard from Pumba comment earlier on that aspect, and all 288, sorry, 128 units are deed restricted affordable at 60 percent AMI or less.

Um I think I sorry I went a little uh fast.

The 20-year impact to all taxing districts general levies is estimated just over five million for the city of Bend, the first year impact, which includes bonds and the local fire option.

Uh, the impact is estimated over uh just over 58,000.

And then uh this slide concludes my presentation as we highlight the funding stack that it takes to produce affordable housing units.

I think it's important to point out that the state of Oregon has awarded our community of Bend over 66 million for these specific developments.

And I want to hand it back over to the mayor if you wanted to hear from the developers.

I know we have a representative from Bear Day Pines available virtually and Cascade Landing represented in the room as well.

Yeah, so let's um I have a question for Carrie before she sure go ahead.

Um question is uh council approved the distribution of the um pro housing grant funding a couple of weeks ago.

And so those two projects will they have will they come before us too for property tax exemptions when they're prepared?

That'll be for they'll be they're earlier in the development process than these two, is my understanding.

So yes, but I think it's fair to assume that they may apply for property tax exemptions.

We'll wait to see that.

Yeah, okay.

Rachel do you have additional information?

I just want to clarify that the housing authority doesn't have to ask for that property tax exemption.

It's an automatic for them.

So it just belts.

So it would just be belly fine dispelled.

Okay, okay.

All right, I'll invite Ben if you want to come up and talk a little bit about Cascade Landing just briefly.

Sure.

Hi, Mayor Kebler, counselors.

Thanks for having me.

I could be uh quick um cascade landing.

Um we we're really proud of this um development.

It's the best I think we can do.

Um we're thrilled with the investment from the state and also from the city.

And the tax abatement is a huge part of um why we pursue it as the opportunity for it.

From our perspective, the tax abatement we work in a lot of different jurisdictions.

Sometimes we use it to maximize debt on different deals.

On this one, we're actually using it to maximize the opportunity to serve lower income households, 30 percent households.

It can be more expensive than the on the on the back end, um require more services.

So having those savings on the back end is a critical part of being able to serve those 30 percent households.

So we're really grateful for the opportunity and for all the support from the city.

And while I have the chair, I want to say thank you to Carrie and Rachel for all their support on what is a very complicated process going through all the districts, and it's been a real experience.

So thank you, Carrie.

Thank you, Rachel.

And any questions about the project, I'm happy to feel just a question about the funding.

Um, I assume there was a reason why this couldn't be a mixed development mixed income kind of a project.

Is it is there a funding requirement?

There is, yeah.

The the funding is statutory uh capped at 60%.

Whereas with tax credits, you can go higher.

But it sounds like you have 30 percent 30 percent limited and 60 percent.

Right, but no, no higher than 60%.

And so if there was any market rate homes in this project, then the project wouldn't be eligible for that assistance.

Um, you sure, yeah, we can only build using the lift funds.

Uh, you know, we can only build affordable housing with those with those funds.

Okay.

Is there a certain number of units that you're reserving for the 30%?

Yes, we're at 15%, I believe, of the number of the entire two phases.

I think on this first one, we're at 15 total at 30 percent.

Sorry, I should have had that.

I said a map there for it is two phases.

We're hoping we're waiting for funding for phase two from the state right now.

We're on the waiting list, the state is out of lift funds.

We expect that'll move to be a tax credit project rather than the big bloated lift deal.

So on phase two, frankly, that uh the abatement will help us in a different way, it'll help us leverage uh more more permanent financing.

Got it.

And just to remind this is in the ponderous master plan area that does have market rate housing in the rest of the neighborhood.

That's right, yeah, pardon me.

Yes, so we're 10 acres of the total 40, and you know, our affordable housing is the key was the key, I think, to getting that um yeah, and we amended the requirements for this master plan because we did how it first came into the UGB expansion, right?

Because the original folks couldn't basically deliver it was they overpromised the whole property was like yeah, 30 percent and we adjusted the policy.

And we are trying to exceed the exceed the lowest threshold right now, but we are contingent on phase two to achieve it.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

And I think we have Seth online for Verde Pines.

You got him, Ashley?

Yeah.

Hello.

Hi, we can hear you.

Hello, can you can you guys hear me?

Yep, we can hear you.

Great.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

My name is Seth O'Connell.

I'm a developer for United Housing Partners, and I'm here in support of the property tax exemption for Verde Pines.

Um, as it was just explained, these exemptions can be used differently.

And in our project, it's not just a financial detail, it is an essential part of the capital stack because we sized our loan based on um not paying those property taxes.

So we are gonna create um a three million dollar gap if we're unable to secure that.

Uh Verde Pines brings 48 million dollars of direct investment to the city of Bend.

Um, it's it's gonna be in a neighborhood that's newly developed, it's gonna give equity that neighborhoods close to schools and parks.

It's properly parked.

We designed it at uh about 1.5%, so that it's meets the residents' needs with some of the larger bedrooms, but also isn't just a sea of asphalt.

Uh the density does matter on this project.

Uh the the sellers of the land did tell us that you know they've they've been trying very hard to draw more commercial development here, grocers, coffee shops, that kind of retail.

But they just think that uh, you know, with the cost of land in Ben, it's very difficult to do without higher density, especially in in an outer neighborhood like East End.

Uh you heard the neighbor, or you heard the numbers earlier in this very meeting.

Nearly 40% of your population is renters, 47% of those families and individuals are cost burdened.

Part of this is because 54% of Ben's rental options and are single family homes, taking these uh statistics right from yours, those are renting for about 2,900 a month.

Uh jobs and recreational arts or jobs are slipping, the economy needs this workforce housing.

The great thing about Verde Pines is once we deliver these 128 units, there's gonna be safe, new affordable housing.

And even though the 20 years or the property tax exemptions for 20 years, because of the lift restrictions, these will be affordable for 50 years.

Um, a ton of hard work has gone into this project.

UHP and Latino Community Association, we're working together for two years to get the funding.

We finally received that commitment in May, and one of the caveats was can you close by the end of the year?

Uh despite it being such a heavy lift.

We've been amazed by city staff's ability to rise to the challenge working alongside our architects and engineers to get all the entitlement approved and right to the finish line.

Last night the school board unanimously supported this tax exemption, and they actually asked the city to follow suit.

On behalf of so many individuals and organizations, we want to thank Carrie and Rachel as well.

We urge you guys to pass this property tax exemption tonight.

Thank you, Seth.

Um, any other questions about this project?

Yeah, yes.

Um Hi Seth, this is Councilor Mendez.

Could you describe a little bit more about the constraints regarding the the parking?

Because I mean, when you look at this design, it's like 65% is devoted to surface parking, and probably half of these apartments will their only windows will open up on a parking lot.

Uh and so you know, we have all the we know all the associated negative impacts of large seas of asphalt.

So why did this project end up like this?

Yeah, this is this is a great question.

Uh we never want to underpark a project ever.

So that's that's important to us, but then it was also important to uh both Polish, who is the developer on the project that the parking was not gonna impact the neighbors, and then working with Latino Community Association early in the project, one of the things that they brought up is is their beneficiaries, they have more cars, you know, a lot of them are have work cars, vans, trucks, in addition to you know their vehicles, and they just asked for us to include some of those larger bedroom apartments, and also to make sure that this thing wasn't underparked, which is challenges that they've had in other apartment complexes in the area in in central Oregon.

Do you plan to offer parking uh decoupled from the cost of rent?

Yes, the parking is decoupled from the cost rent, correct.

Thank you.

Um my question is about um the zoning.

Um, I don't know if it's zoning, but it's the the land was shown as commercial in the master plan for Easton, and that's in our development code.

So I'm curious how this might I don't know if this is a question for staff or for the applicant, how oh Collins here perfect.

I see you hiding back there, Colin.

Come on.

So my question is how um how is the multifamily allowed on land that is shown as commercial within our development code?

Yeah, so that's a result of two efforts from the legislature in 2000 and or 2021.

There was Senate Bill 8, and then in 2023, there was House Bill 3395.

Both of them allow affordable housing to be located on commercial lands um within cities.

So we're essentially preempted by the state or mandated by the state to allow this.

So because it's commercial and because they meet the siting requirements that are within the bill, uh they're allowed to put uh affordable housing on commercial land.

I guess, but an alternative way that this could have been developed is as a mixed-use building where there's commercial space on the ground floor with residential above.

Um so does the the legislation you're saying specifically says the city has no voice or power to dictate the form of affordable housing that is provided.

It does.

I mean, well, and I'm paraphrasing the statute, but it says a city shall allow affordable housing on commercial lands.

There's not a lot of negotiation.

I mean, why wouldn't the city have attached something like that as a condition of receiving tax exemptions?

I can I can read you the statute.

Affordable housing allowed outright.

Oh, I get I get what affordable housing needs.

Affordable housing does not mean it says every unit on each unit on the property is made available to own or rent, etc.

etc.

It does not say um that covers any other kind of unit.

So I don't think that the this law could be used for um a mixed a mixed development, nor could any of their funding that they've gotten.

No, the developer, oh sure, sure, they could go for the same funding to do a mixed-use building.

There's lots of mixed-use buildings that have affordable housing integrated with commercial in more urban areas.

Yeah, no, not to pay for no, not to pay for commercial.

You would have to have a pro forma that you know has the funding for commercial in a different way.

Right.

Um I don't think the state law would uh would support affordable plus commercial.

I don't think that's the same.

I mean, there's a there's a mixed use affordable housing building in downtown Bend where visit Benz offices are.

That's right.

That's not something that came in under this law.

Which is what you were asking about.

So yeah, but and I think what counselor Mendez was saying is that could council make that a requirement in order to receive the exemption.

Can I ask a question?

Seth and follow up.

Ben, can I ask you just because you're in the room?

If you had been required to include commercial just because you're in the room and you're familiar with the stacks, I know you're not in the project.

There would be uh wage impacts.

So our our entire budget would be 20% higher.

So on an affordable housing project, it wouldn't most likely right now.

They're there are if it was one of our projects, it it wouldn't work.

It would be a prevailing wage project.

That's right.

Because of the commercial component on a mixed-use affordable project.

So you could do it, you should be able to pay for it.

So okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, I have I mean, I have a real I guess yeah, we I mean we need to provide housing, but I I mean I've we also are paying a lot of money to deal with traffic congestion in our community, and you know, when we have developers coming forward and promising commercial space that you know our residents are counting on.

I think that past councils were counting on that current council is counting on.

It's it's kind of tough to stomach that we couldn't find a um a solution that kind of meets everyone's needs in these in situations like this.

How much is left for commercial with this development?

Um I believe that the entire site is eight acres, and I think this takes up a little less than half of that, if I'm looking at this correctly.

But there's also some of the commercial types of development that people that live in that part of town are asking for could also occur in some of the other lands that have different zoning designations than the CG zone that this is, right?

This is commercial general.

The Southeast area zone has a significant amount of employment land within it.

Right.

My understanding is about a hundred acres, in which you know some of the things we've been hearing about in terms of the grocery stores and stuff.

And and I think it also gets to a different question for us around at least zoning, is relaxing some of the um rigidity, or you know, what's a more flexibility on what you can build where over time.

I think there's a legitimate question about losing opportunities for the commercial development if things redevelop as housing and it takes 10 or 15 years to get enough people that live there to support viable, you know, vibrant commercial um stuff, and then there's no more land to build it on because we've eaten up in other ways.

Do we end up with a more suburban land form, which we're trying to avoid because that's where this leads us?

It's a valid question that the community and the folks in this part of town are asking about.

I don't think we can solve it this evening with this one application, but I think it's a really valid question that we're gonna need to wrestle with as we go forward so that we get the kinds of results for complete communities we're after.

Yes, that's been all the conversations I've been having with neighbors with Senator Broadman.

Um plan to bring it up, you know, with other state leaders.

Um we're gonna hear about it at the round table.

I'm sure, yeah, and we'll continue to talk about this, but um, I'm not willing to say that because this project isn't perfect or the best that it could be or meets all the needs of everyone, that we should let it get caught in the crossfire of what is a different conversation I think is happening around neighborhood commercial walkable communities and amenities.

Um, and I think the point is very well taken that this is going to bring over 400 people living in this spot um in for not very much use of land, um, and that is gonna make actually the stores on that corner a lot more viable because those are all potential customers as the rest of Easton fills out over the next few years because those phases are gonna take a while.

Um, and so I think that can even accelerate the availability of commercial in this neighborhood.

Um, and I think it's an incredible opportunity for the partnership that we see between LCA and United Housing to actually have housing that folks in our community who may not think that they're the people that affordable housing is for, this is for them, right?

And it's to help them get into that resource that could um really stabilize them and help them continue to be great members of the community.

So can I for one additional thing?

Um I mean this discussion is mostly about the tax exemption, and um just turn into the code for a sec.

The the code says council will grant the exemptions, excuse me, will grant the exemption for any qualified rental housing that means the requirements of this chapter.

So this discussion is really about, I think it's ongoing discussion about what what kind of development does the city want to get in exchange for the support, and it's a programmatic discussion talking about state law and the code.

I mean, right now we have code that says um if the if the elements of the chapter are met, council will grant.

The question is is the chapter meaning the code what council wants.

And so that's an ongoing discussion that council's certainly welcome to have.

But um, I think this is me saying council doesn't have a ton of flexibility right now.

We have this program through the code, and council wants to evaluate it.

Council can evaluate it, but that's a prospective discussion, I think.

And these projects meet the qualifications in our code.

Okay, yes, that was a performative vote.

It's not performing, it's not performing.

It has it has to be approved by resolution.

So council has to take action to approve it.

I think I think this program is really important and it's been used to do some great things that Carrie has said, so I don't I don't see it as performative at all.

But any other discussion before we get to motions.

Colin, knowing knowing what you know about the requirements for things like grocery stores, is there are there other opportunities for grocery stores and in Southeast Bend?

The short answer is yes.

There's a significant amount of employment land within the southeast area, which is it was added to the UGB at the same time or roughly the same time.

This master plan came in or a little bit before that.

But but there are hundreds of acres of land still to be annexed.

We're currently in discussions with some of those owners in working through some of the infrastructure needs that they have out there.

As the council is aware, there's been a big lift that is taking place by the city to put sewer in there.

So we've got sewer relatively figured out for those properties.

So we're down to transportation and we're actively meeting with those property owners in there.

So we're hopeful that we can start moving those more of those properties into the city limits through annexations through master plans and through more uh types of urban development that'll put that employment land into play.

But I think back to your question, one of them is you know what's the marketability of a grocery store, and what we've seen in other places that it takes quite a few rooftops to be actually there and occupied in order to make those those types of retail viable.

Um not sure if we're there yet with this with this area, but I think with the um future annexations of in the southeast area.

There's also the Stevens Road Tract that we're actively in negotiations with the developer, trying to get them in with a master plan, the caldera ranch that the council looked at um relatively recently.

We're talking with that developer, they're gonna add another hundred acres well just right across the street from here.

I think eventually we'll get to that critical mass of customers essentially in order to allow much more flexibility for these developers to put retail that's desirable by the neighbors.

Thank you.

I move to approve the resolution granting an exemption from property taxes for the Cascade Landing Project located at the end of Ponderosa Avenue in Bend, Oregon, offered for rent solely to income qualifying households.

Second, all right, moved by council, seconded by council Norris.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right.

Next one no.

Yep, I heard it.

I move to approve the resolution granting an exemption from property taxes for the Verde Pines project located at the corner of Knott Road and Southeast Ledger Lane in Bend, Oregon, offered for rent solely to income qualifying households.

Second.

All right, move by Council Perkins, second by council Riley.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

No.

All right, thank you, everyone.

The motions passed.

Thank you for your work um putting these projects together.

Yes.

Um, and for being here tonight um virtually and in person.

And I also want to say thank you to the school board for your unanimous support for these projects at their meeting last night.

Um, I understand there are some comments um about this process and just making sure the city is committed to um accelerating affordable housing, and um I'll have some follow-up conversations with school board members as well to talk about the work that we've done and are gonna keep doing to accelerate affordable housing and how we can continue to partner with them.

So I think this is an example of how we are partnering with the community in a variety of ways to accelerate affordable housing.

So it's it's actually a specific example of that.

Yeah, I think I think it's a pretty arduous process for our developers, and I would love to talk to our partners about how to make this process a little smoother for everybody and um make sure that we're we're accelerating how fast we can get things on the ground.

I see some clapping in the back.

All right, great.

I hope you know we I do think that we do really good work on housing, and I and I really look forward to the work that we're planning to do on economic development to try to find ways of providing some of these commercial amenities because I do think they're really important.

We hear about this all the time from residents, and um I'm I'm glad that we have a plan for it, and so you know, for people who are watching, uh, you know, stay tuned because um more work on commercial side is coming.

Yeah, great.

All right, on to item number seven.

Council is asked to authorize the city manager to accept a grant from Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council C O I C to fund Franklin Avenue shelter operations through June 30th, 2026, in an amount of 974,561 dollars and seventy cents, and to amend the contract with Shepherd's House Ministries for Franklin Avenue Shelter Operations Services in an amount not to exceed 890,349 dollars for a total contract amount not to exceed 3,624,493.

Council, uh good evening, for O'Keefe, shelter coordinator in the housing division.

Um I'm not gonna repeat all of that.

So this presentation is going to be an overview of the Franklin Avenue Shelter Fiscal Year 2026 funding that you're considering tonight.

This is a count that's conducted on a single night in January each year by the homeless leadership coalition.

It covers Jefferson to shout's in Crick Counties and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.

There are some limitations with this data, but it does give us a good snapshot of how many people may be experiencing houselessness on any given night.

It's not perfect, but it allows us to kind of scale services based on that estimated number.

In 2025, our region identified 2,108 people experiencing houselessness across the Tri-County area.

This is a 17% increase from 2024.

And I just want to acknowledge that part of our increases have over the last few years have been we've been better at counting.

Service providers have done an exceptional job coordinating, especially in more rural areas like Prineville and Madras.

And so we've been able to capture more people in this count than we had in previous years.

And in areas surrounding Bend where we would reasonably expect them to access services here, like to shoot server woods.

Many folks are living in shelters, however, 55% of the people identified were unsheltered.

Over the biennium, we've bucked the trend, not seeing an increase since a significant increase since 2023.

There are 562 shelter beds in Bend.

You'll notice this is an increase from the last time we presented to you.

All of which are supported by the city.

However, council is consistently recognized the need for additional shelter beds and put this resource to use.

It's low barrier with set asides for folks who are medically fragile and families with minor children.

In August, they had 16 families with minor children and 38 households with at least one medically vulnerable individual.

Since opening, they've provided almost 46,000 nights of shelter, maintained a 90 per 98% utilization rate, and supported 64 individuals in transitioning to more permanent housing.

Quick overview of the funding that we've received thus far.

And then fiscal year 2025 was funded fully through House Bill 519, which was passed to extend operations of those shelters established under the executive order.

The in the most recent session, the legislature passed House Bill 3644, which established established a statewide shelter program.

This will be fully set up by fiscal year 27.

In the meantime, we've received some gap funding in the amount of 393,660, which funds operations through the end of this month.

And then the other gap funding for the rest of fiscal year 2026 is what you're considering tonight.

The majority of funds are passed through to Shepherd's House for the operations of the site.

And then the city retains a small amount for facilities repair and maintenance and contract administration.

Okay.

Now on to what is actually up for consideration.

The um first item is to accept an award from Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council to fully fund the remaining months of fiscal year 2026.

Um these funds originate from the or from Oregon Housing and Community Services.

Um as you are likely aware that program has seen a six percent reduction since fiscal year 2025 for shelter funding across the state.

Um Shepherd's House has been an exceptional steward of their funding.

They've been able to expand to buy 10 beds as well as make some um pretty significant facilities repairs with the funding that they were awarded under their annual budgets previously.

We do not anticipate that this six percent reduction will impact their operations in any way.

Um as we have in the past, we'll retain a portion for facilities repair and maintenance and contract administration.

And then the second item is to pass through 893,300 890,349 to Shepherd's House for operations through June 30th of 2026.

All right, any questions for Brook?

I just have a comment.

Um it is so hard to do what you do, and I'm looking at you, Amy and Brooke, um, in order to figure out how to make this funding work for all of our shelters.

So I just want to give a really big thank you to you because you perform magic and and um enable us to to keep these important um shelters in our continuum going.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Book on we we did do some site visits uh on on some of these, and the six percent is is you know that is a hit to their their budget right here.

So I'm I'm I'm really impressed that they're they're able to continue those operations, particularly with rising costs uh right now.

And um, so I'm watching that six percent and I'm and I'm listening.

Uh if it gets really painful for them.

Yeah, and we are um talking with CYC about how maybe we can shift some funding sources that we utilize to put some of that funding back into the continuum.

Um those conversations are still happening.

Okay, I moved to authorize the city manager to accept a grant from and enter into a grant agreement with the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council COIC in substantially the form presented for operation of the Franklin Avenue Shelter in the amount of 974,5617.

Second all right, moved by council Riley, second by Council Perkins.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All right, and it's approving amendment to the agreement with Shepherd's Housing Ministries for Emergency Shelter and Support Services at the Franklin Avenue Shelter and substantially the form presented to council in amount not to exceed 890,349 dollars and for a total not to exceed amount of three million six hundred and twenty-four thousand four hundred and ninety-three dollars.

All right, Council Riley, second by councillor Norris.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

On item eight.

This is the second reading of an ordinance adopting the emblem tax increment finance plan.

All right, and this is a roll call vote.

So we just need a motion.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I move for the second reading and adoption by roll call vote of the ordinance adopting the emblem tax increment finance plan and establishing the emblem tax increment finance area.

Sorry.

All right, move by council Perkins, second by council Riley.

Roll call vote.

Counselor Francisa, no, counselor Mendez.

Councillor Riley, yes.

Um Mayor Protect.

Yes, Councillor Norris.

Yeah, gosh, sorry.

Councilor Norris.

Yes.

Counselor Platt.

Yes.

Mayor Kepler.

Yes.

All right, and then we are on to city manager's report.

Uh yes, a few things.

Uh, what I wanted to announce.

I think this has been there's been some build up to this, but it is now finally here.

Um we have people on accepting staff.

It's they're moving in in phases, so we have our some of our support crew and then our transportation department is in the process of moving in and our water services really building a one you know public works department, but these divisions are moving in over time.

I think the last is fleet.

Everybody will be in by Thanksgiving.

I wanted to offer to council if you're interested in a tour out there.

Um, I'm gonna send out some information in my memo this week to get you out there in small groups so you can see it, but just to tease you, this is what it looks like.

It's all really well done.

It's it is beautiful.

Um, just a little bit of an overview.

35 acre site, it's our headquarter building.

We have 250 staff there.

Um, you know, it's really the first time we've had a facility built for the need.

We had an old refrigerator factory and an old contractor site.

That's we were just making do.

We've never had a public works building that was built to be a public works building.

So it's pretty exciting.

Here's our front lobby, the incorporation of public art, those are old street signs that you can see the shoots river there, it's pretty neat.

Um we really have employed this everybody enters through the front door.

We're all you know, part of like whether you're a field crew worker or administrative staff or an engineer.

We all this is called the intersection.

Um, so everybody enters there and it's a space where we all uh get together and talk and really perform the work in new ways where there's a lot more room for collaboration, people are less sort of offices, a lot more open space.

This is the space that we intend to have a council meeting or have some of the work sessions there.

It's actually built for that, it's bigger than this space, and it has removable tables and screens, and it has that outdoor patio that opens as well.

So we have a place for the public to kind of there's a waiting area, it's just much more uh welcoming.

You can see some of the furniture there, uh the spaces.

Uh, we have a fleet building that is actually built to service all of our equipment with lifts and much more safety measures, and then our operations building.

So all of our equipment instead of being left out in the cold and deteriorate deteriorating faster, uh, it can you know they can remain at a certain temperature and get out on the road a lot quicker, especially for winter operations, so we don't have frozen gravel that we can't spread on the on the roads.

Um just just really thankful to staff and keeping this project on time under budget.

Um, we've really remarkable for this size of project and all the um the work that went into it.

So it's pretty exciting.

I'm really happy to tour you, and we'll have some events coming up.

We'll have an open house for our staff in November.

We do a play town hall, so we'll be doing that, and then we'll do some tours with you now, and then we'll find uh some other times for other events.

And then just a few other updates uh on the on the project side of things.

Uh so the skyline ranch uh roundabout, all four legs are now open.

Um we had that last piece that we were waiting for material.

Just wanted to report on that.

That's a good example of that public-private partnership that we hope to replicate in the Southeast area.

So all that was paid for and performed by the private by private development.

Um the only update, uh, we have an upcoming um full closure of the it's a brief full closure of the intersection from October 27th to October 20th, just two days for that intersection that's needed to accommodate the sewer bypass to connect to the uh newly constructed sewer line.

Um, and additionally, we have a soft commitment from BNSF that they will be here this to start the crossing work on November 17th, which is really good news.

So the 27th and 28th of October.

Uh yeah, 27th through the 29th.

And which intersection is that 27.

Wall and only.

Okay, well, and only it's a temporary couple days to because you transitioned from the skyline ranch.

Yeah, sorry, I got to only now.

I just went right there.

We've got to keep something closed.

Yeah, right, right, right.

Um so if this holds, we have a good chance of getting that whole corridor open by the end of the year.

So it's really that BNSF work that we've been working really closely on.

So I just wanted to give you that update.

Um, if it doesn't hold, then we'll still still look to reopen the corridor.

Um, but we'll have to come back in the spring for uh that work at around BNSF.

So similar to what we had to do with Wilson, right?

We got that corridor completed and took a while.

Now that work is being completed.

So we just we really want to get that open for the traveling public.

Um, and then the work on the stretch from fourth to eighth is proceeding on schedule and should be wrapped up before the end of the year.

So that's going according to plan.

And that is it.

Okay, we are adjourned.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.